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About a month ago, "J," an old acquaintance found me on Facebook. She had made my school life pretty unpleasant from the third grade on. The first time I met her we were 8 or 9 and she and her little crowd of popular girls approached me at recess and asked if I wanted to be their friend. It seemed really nice until she told me if I hung around with them, I wasn't allowed to talk to Kim, who was the class whipping girl. Kim had a hygiene problem but she was the first person to be nice to me in a new school where I, the shy girl, was fearful of everyone. I remember telling J that nobody told me who I could be friends with and that I didn't want to be part of her group if I couldn't be friends with Kim. That pretty much set my status up until high school. :wah: J was the first girl, first person I ever hit. She wouldn't stop hitting me over the head with her book one day and I turned around and popped her one. She had a new respect for me after that.

Time crawled by and J found me through our old mutual friend on Facebook. She was adamant about apologizing to me for how she had treated me back then. That seemed like a hundred years ago. I held no grudge. I told her that and I accepted her apology and we started a friendship after all those years.

She's deploying to Iraq this month. I was stunned when I found out she was in the service, because it seemed so very unlike her. Yet she said it had always been in the back of her mind. I had assumed she would go there and have some sort of "deskjob" as it were, something out of the way of great harm, but no. She says she's going to be a "gunner" whatever the official term for that is. Or maybe that is the official term, I don't know. I am not at all military familiar so I admit I was out of the loop. I didn't realize they allowed women in those positions. Not that I think only men should be in danger like that, that's not what I'm saying. I'm just surprised is all.

She and our mutual friend met up yesterday after about twenty five years of not seeing each other. They sent me a picture of the two of them. Wish I could have been there. It seems strange that now that these two women have resurfaced in my life, that there's a possibility I may not ever see one of them again. I hope I'm just being unnecessarily dramatic. It's weird how this woman made my life a small personal hell when we were kids and yet I have a heaviness in my heart now about this situation and I am already asking for blessings and protection for her. I'm not sure what my point is here. I think I just wanted to tell someone without it getting back to J. I wouldn't want her to know how worried I am. Ok, thanks for reading me.

You can be a very kind hearted person, & it shows! Hope you do get to see her one day, and you all have a few laughs!

Very forgiving and a very big heart. :-4

I hope your rekindled friendship goes on for many years.

I know just where you're coming from.

I empathise in that my life at school was far from easy too, similarly, because I went my own way and made my own mind up.

Since working at the school that I do, several old school enemies have resurfaced and work at the same school, which I thought really sucked to begin with, but now it's alright because we've all grown...well, some more than others to be honest.

Still, it's the fact that someone who came across as selfish and awful could be about to lay down her life for what she believes in has given you a new view of her. All of us have that giving capacity within us, it's just that some discover it (and good on them) and some remain shallow and pathetic.

Maybe this person has grown as an individual and realised the irrelevance of all the narcissistic ways common to her youth. In that case, it's only natural you'd accept her as she is. I know you've evolved enough to recognise that in another. :-6