Betrayal -- Aaliyah Rodriguez

Betrayal

Not knowing what to say in the most crucial moments of your life.

That lump in your throat before you cry.

Looking the person in the eye when you know that you have lost their trust, friendship, love and they will never feel the same way about you.

Seeing the tears well in their eyes as you tell them the very bad thing that you have done.

Knowing that you caused all this pain in their heart, but knowing that it was a mistake that could have been easily fixed with you thinking twice about your decisions.

I betrayed her.

She looked at me as if she was looking at gum at the bottom of her shoe. I was nothing to her. She sat down, her knees felt weak and I could see that she was not in the mood for my presence. But I kept going, kept telling what happened even though I knew it was killing her in the inside. I was halfway through the story when she slammed her hand on the table. All eyes looked over at us. She held back the tears and told me she no longer wanted to hear my pathetic excuses, that it doesn’t matter what I have to say, she didn’t care.

She was done with me.

I considered walking away, leaving it as it was. I didn’t even want to finish the story, it was just as hard to tell as it was to listen to. But I couldn’t back down yet, I had to finish telling her what happened.

I have waited too long to tell her, contemplated each outcome of the situation, tried to imagine how she would feel. But you can never predict your friend’s heart being broken by someone she considered her best friend, someone she always went to when things went wrong. The person she never thought would ever betray her. I told her I had to finish. She looked up at me,

“I hate you.”

She was so overwhelmed with emotion she could not portray anything but hate. If I was in her shoes, I would hate myself too.

I had to continue, there was no choice for me. I kept feeling this need to continue even though I really didn’t want to, but the thought of our friendship sitting in the middle of this conversation helped me to push through. I opened my mouth but no words came out. Maybe I shouldn’t say anything. I should have turned around so I won’t cause her anymore distress, because I knew she could not hate me anymore than she already did right now. I looked at her and knew I owed her the full truth, I took a deep breath. She slowly went through all of the phases: anger, hatred, regret, sadness and pain. I tried not to look her in the eye. I didn’t know what to say.

“Sorry.” Tears started to well in my eyes.

After I said this I immediately regretted it.

“Sorry? That’s all you’ve got to say? Sorry?” She looked at me, her mouth wide open in disgust. “You are unbelievable!” She said, looking at me like I was someone she had never known before.

She yelled at me telling me that ‘sorry’ wasn’t going to fix anything and that she hoped I wasn’t stupid enough to think it would. She mimicked me, she told me that we would never be the same and that she would have rather me not tell her anything but for her friend to do something like this to her. She pushed past me and left.

I cried. I should have done as she said and spared her her feelings by not telling her at all. Keeping this deep dark secret to myself. But, I knew that if I had done that then I wouldn’t be able to live knowing I did such a thing. I thought to myself the different ways to show her that I wasn’t a bad person because of this and to prove to her that it was just a stupid mistake.

I couldn’t believe that one mistake made this situation spiral out of control, which made me lose everything that I could have found meaningful. She was always there and apparently I wasn’t. I knew that one day I would have enough courage to defend myself to her and maybe mend our relationship.

But today was definitely not that day.