When we first met it could have hardly have been a worse time. I had recently been devastated emotionally by the love of my life, and here you were, I think, in the process of becoming the love of my friend’s life, whom, as it happens, I was also losing.
Within a day of that fateful meeting I had been told of you by the person you would eventually marry. He had the least flattering description of you as a sort of warning for my next meeting with my friend, which made the eventual introduction to you even more cautionary when my friend asked me not to engage on a certain level with you.
Given the negative aspersions on your character by your future husband, and having to witness the stranger my friend became in your presence, you and I got along surprisingly well. Which, considering what a bad period that was for me, is extraordinary. A lost love and losing a friend caused my words and actions towards you to be unfair, and for that I am sorry.
Being remorseful I apologized to you on more than one occasion, which will surely shock some to know. In ways you weren’t aware of you helped me through that dark time, and more.
Over time, we talked more than my friend, my wife and your husband knew of. This I am grateful for, as it brought us to a better place and understanding of one another, and eventually, at least I think, resulted in a moment that saved my life. I don’t know that there was an opportunity to return that, but later on you told me that my words and sentiments encouraged you in yours, when it felt like everyone else had given up on you, and for that I was honored.
Life was difficult for you in the extreme. Bad decisions, worse circumstances, and the negative influence shall go unnamed. Through it all, I never saw you shrink, and if anything you went forward with a seeming dignity that people couldn’t understand, which was really a strength in itself.
The detractors will only have the surface to speak on. I came to see some of the substance that made up who you really are. We are never and always the same person in other’s eyes, and most will only dwell on what they disapprove of, but you, at least in my eyes, are far better than those who look down on us. Those who think of themselves as better, and whose actions condemned a man to death, you were brave enough to stand up to and speak out against. So in the end, who is the better stronger person?
You are my friend, you are!