regret

Currently listening to Berlioz - Symphonie Fantastique

I don't regret many things in life. Like everyone else, I have done and experienced things that were unpleasant and painful. I don't typically regret those instances, though. The things that I learned from those experiences have helped make me the person I am today.

There is one major regret that I have, though, and it really bothers me. I don't make friends easily, so I cherish the few friendships that I do have. One of my few friends is (or should I say, was) a girl that I met in Hong Kong in January, 1998. We stayed in touch while I was in the country and after I left. She ended up going to UVSC in 2000, and I helped her find an apartment and get acclimated to life in Utah.

Like many foreigners, she had a hard time adjusting to her new life in the US. She didn't like her roommates and believed that people weren't friendly to her because of her race and limited English-speaking abilities. Having known her for a while, however, I felt that she was externalizing the problem. She was quiet and not at all outgoing, and tended not to assimilate very well into any environment. Unlike when I had known her in Hong Kong, I told her exactly what I thought. I told her that she needed to make more of an effort to make friends with Americans, practice her English, and act like an American. In essence, I gave her a "When in Rome..." speech. I also told her that if she didn't like the US, she should go home. I always thought that Americans who didn't like Hong Kong should go home, so why should this be any different?

That was in 2003. Ever since then, she has refused to speak to me. I have tried contacting her via email every year since, but have never gotten an answer. I've dug around the internet and found that she transferred to BYU at some point in the past, but I don't know where she is now or what she's doing. I see that she has a profile on Facebook, but she has not responded to my requests to link up. In short, I am being ignored.

I could have handled things with my friend a lot differently, and a lot better. It's likely that she just wanted me to listen to her, and not to just give her advice. At a time when her life was probably more difficult than it had ever been before, the only thing I did for her was tell her to "suck it up", which in essence means that I did nothing for her at all.

She may contact me at some point in the future, but I don't know. For now, it looks as if I lost a good friend, and I really regret what I did to cause that.