With Apologies

I have a friend I have known for some 60 years. Yet, until yesterday I knew absolutely nothing about her life before we met. It was, I told her, as if she had only been birthed the day our paths crossed.

It turns out that her early times were hard and often very uncomfortable. Dealing with issues that would shape her view of herself and the way she saw other people. And what I believed, what I knew to be true, was very different from reality.

And so I began to wonder how it could be that I never took a moment to ask what it had been like for her before we met. Where had she grown up? What were her memories of those days? I find it difficult to fathom the depth of my own myopia, as if there was no universe except as it related to me.

I never knew until yesterday that she had not always lived in the house in which she resided when we first met. Did not live in the same town or even the same state. Did not come from the same comfortable existence that I always assumed she had. Did not share the ease of her days that I had taken as a given.

And if I understood so little about my friend of six decades, what else had I missed along the way? Has my journey been such that I have failed to comprehend, to even look for, matters that have not presented themselves simply and easily to me? That I have not taken the time or put in the effort to look beneath the surface?

I apologize to my friend for my shortcomings. The world has often treated her harshly. The hand she has been dealt one that would have made lesser people crumble. And maybe it was those early years, the ones that had fully escaped my vision, that had created the strength and fortitude she has exhibited. Maybe, if I had taken a moment to ask, I would have had this answer many years ago.

And I apologize to others among you who I might not have treated with the importance you deserve. Your story matters. You matter. I will try to do better. I will try to be a better friend.

Forgive me.