Warning! I am about to go into sentimental mode. You have been warned.

I don’t like the month of August. In fact it could be said that I down right hate it. The reason you may ask for me to dislike a month of the year? Simple (yet really complicated) to explain. One of the so called loves of my life was born on the twenty first of this month. So when August comes around I always get sappy. I think about the good times and the mistakes I made.

It started out me and this girl being acquaintances. We saw each other frequently enough that a friendship eventually started. And it was good for a number of years. We did things together. We hung out and did things as a “couple”. But we were not a boyfriend/girlfriend. We just enjoyed each others company. I eventually met her parents and most of her family. The family liked me. I liked her family. It was all hunky dory. She had a boyfriend that treated her like shit. I would be there for her when she was having some rough times with the guy. And this is when the trouble started.

Maybe it was seeing her cry, maybe It was talking to her about everything that was going wrong. Maybe it was because I started to feel sorry for her. So I started to try to cheer her up. It became once a week thing. After a while I started to develop feelings for her. One of my friends has compared it to Stockholm Syndrome. You know the thing were hostages develop feelings to their captors? Now I don’t know if that’s how I can explain it. I don’t know. Needless to say I kept my feelings to myself for a long time. But it was getting weird. She knew something was going on. She broke up with the guy that was giving her trouble after a while.

So one night at a party after I had consumed a mass quantity of alcohol I spilled my guts to her. She took it better than I had imagined. Her reply was that she loved me, yet was not in love with me. That statement confused me for a long time. We stayed friends after my gut spilling. Yet I could tell it was different. Then the love of my life joined the Air Force. We wrote letters to each other for six months or so.

One day I got a letter from her telling me she had met a guy and that she was going to marry him. I didn’t know what to say. She came home for a week before the wedding and she visited me. She wanted to know if the wedding was local if I would attend. Luck had it the wedding was being held out where she was stationed. It seemed it was important to her that I approve of the wedding. So I did what any noble guy would do. I lied to her. I told her of course I would have gone to the wedding when I knew damn well I wouldn’t have. But it’s what she wanted to hear. So she married the guy.

We lost touch not to long after that. I don’t see her often, when I do it is awkward. We say hello and ask how each other is doing. But that is the extent of the conversation. I lost a good friend because of the way I felt about her. I don’t like losing friends, it is a sad thing. I hold my friends very dear. My friends sometimes comes before family. All I can do is hope this kind of thing doesn’t happen again. And of course I go on hating August.