Rose's Letter

I had a good friend in high school named Rose. Recently, when I was cleaning out my closets, I came across a letter from her. When I was in high school, girls used to write letters to their friends all the time... tell their dark secrets, get their emotions out on paper. We all did it, and looking back now, I can see how therapeutic it probably was. I wonder if that's all left to email now, which to me, would be a little disappointing. I like the idea of writing free-hand on paper. You see the emotion in the handwriting, you see where she pressed hard on the pen, scribbled, and in some places wrote small so no one could see, and larger for an exclamatory effect. It's so much more personal, more real. And you can rediscover it 20 years later, like I did.

Anyway, Rose had a quiet, shy, sweet exterior. She came from a very traditional Italian family, and was very protected and her parents would never let her out of the house. However, Rose always had a long-term steady boyfriend, from the time we were in the 8th grade. And the rumors of her sex life were always circling. Her boyfriends were always a little unusual -- one was the bad boy who was cute but never showered and everyone always wondered what she saw (or smelled) in him. The Italian-"boss" type who was 20 years old, whom she would sneak out to hotel rooms with. And the highly effeminate guy whom others in our school would make fun of for being gay (even us, his close circle of friends, always wondered).

Anyway, Rose loved to flirt and play mind games. In this letter, she confesses to me that she just told her boyfriend (Dirty Guy)'s good friend that she had a crush on him. Then she proceeded to go back to Dirty Guy to tell him what she did. Her letter was filled with distraught and guilt and she kept saying that she was a horribly mean person and she didn't know why she did the things she did.

A couple of nights ago, soon after reading that letter, I had a dream that I was reunited with her and we hugged. And the hug was so strong, so intense, that I started to cry on her shoulder... long and hard. It felt good to see her again, and I remember feeling that I so wanted to be friends again.

After thinking a lot about that dream, I remembered how our friendship ended (I had actually forgot this when I rediscovered her letter). She betrayed me a couple of years after H.S. graduation. I was having problems with my boyfriend, and was trying to break away to see other people. I had gone on a date, and used to tell her everything. Well, my guy had suspected something, and convinced Rose to record our conversation of my silly details. That evening, he presented me with this tape. I went back to Rose, furious. How could she betray my trust? She tried to apologize but I wouldn't hear of it. Our friendship ended.

And today, I still have regrets about how I handled that situation. I mean, I wasn't totally honest with my boyfriend, was I? I was betraying him, so karma came back and bit me in the ass. And she was the easily-persuaded type. My boyfriend was the suave-charming-schemer type and I always did understand how she could've also been the victim in that set-up, too. And I ended up patching things up with my boyfriend, and he convinced me that I was a sucker if I ever spoke to her again. I think I may have been a sucker for getting back with him.

Many years later, I ran into her in the subway about 4 years ago when I was pregnant with Ladybug. She was with a man that didn't look familiar, and told me she was engaged to be married that year. I was so excited to see her but she looked far less interested. In my exaggerated memory of the last time I saw her, I see her leaving the train with her fiance, laughing and giggling, running away from me.