My past has been bothering me lately.

I’ve done a lot of things that I’m not proud of, but there’s one thing that I hope that I’ll never sink to again. (I made reference to it in my first ever blog post, but never really explained what happened.) A couple years ago, I cheated on Christine with my best friend’s girlfriend. I can say without exaggeration that it’s the worst thing I’ve ever done. Steve, my former friend, and Beth, his former girlfriend, were unofficially engaged. They were planning on getting married, but Steve couldn’t afford a ring.

Christine was devastated, and it took her a long, long time before she could trust me again. I still don’t know how or why she forgave me. If the situations had been reversed, I don’t know if I could have done the same.

Before the secret came out, Steve and Beth moved to Pennsylvania so that they could be together while he went through graduate school.Guilt eventually forced me to tell Christine. When that happened, Beth told Steve, and everything went completely to hell. They went to counseling to try to save the relationship, but it didn’t work.

In the meantime in Wisconsin, Christine managed to console me as virtually all my college friends abandoned me. (Yeah. Not only did she forgive me, she actually helped me through it. Amazing.) Most of them heard Beth’s side of the story via Steve, and never bothered to hear my side. The friendships I was able to maintain have never been the same.

Eventually, Beth moved back to Wisconsin to live at home with her parents, then back to Pennsylvania, then back again to Wisconsin. I haven’t heard anything about her in a long time. As far as I know, she’s still here in Wisconsin.

I tried to blame her for what we did, and I hated her for a long time because of it. I knew that it was my fault as well, but shifting the blame made it easier to stand sometimes.