A few months ago, my roommate ditched me at the last moment. He was my ride home from class, but he went home without me and didn't even give me a heads-up. When I got done with my class, I texted him and he told me he had already gone home. No remorse. No apology. No reason. I expressed my displeasure and communicated my feelings via text. He just glossed over it.

I felt a little bad about it as I would never do this to him, so it hurt when he did it to me, but I didn't think too much of it. He probably had a reason for doing this, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt. When I got home, I expected an apology, but when I encountered him, he acted as if nothing was wrong. The total lack of remorse hurt me more than the actual act itself.

I stopped talking to him and made a promise to myself to only talk to him when it was necessary. With time, he also stopped talking to me and didn’t even ask me what was wrong. This upset me further as he had taken no initiative to find the source of my discontent. 

This went on for months. We were so close to each other yet so far. The room, once brimming with chatter and banter, was now filled with a deafening silence that was almost palpable. More than once, I thought of bridging the gap between us myself, but I decided against it every time. Some people might think it was a matter of ego, but I think it was self-respect. Admittedly, the line between the two is very thin, so it could have been either of the two, but I digress. Regardless of the case, neither of us tried to resolve the issue. 

One day, while I was back at home, I was going through highlighted passages from some books that I’d read earlier. When I came across the passages from ‘Tuesdays with Morrie’, one hit me like a truck. Tuesdays with Morrie is a tale about Morrie, a dying man, reflecting on his life and sharing lessons with his former student, Mitch Albom.

In one of the chapters, Morrie talks about his once-close friend Norman, who would often sculpt Morrie. They, and their wives, used to spend a lot of time with each other until the two had a falling out. Morrie’s wife, Charlotte, had gone through a serious surgery after which neither Norman nor his wife came to check up on her. This felt like a betrayal to Morrie, and he cut off ties with Norman.

A few years after this, Norman died due to lung cancer without the two having made amends. Morrie explains he has always had a gnawing regret consume him ever since the passing of his once-friend and advises Mitch to forgive and forget.

While not as severe, I could draw many parallels between my predicament and Morrie’s. I had always presumed that our issue would sooner or later come to an end. However, this story made me realize that by letting this issue fester, I was pushing myself deeper into the pitfall of hatred; the more time this goes on, the harder it will be to resolve. 

And if it lingers on, I might end up like Morrie—on my deathbed, left with an ever-growing regret of not salvaging a friendship that was worth saving.