Sorry of my Life

We've often been taught to not do things we'd regret later.

Somehow, we don't always learn this lesson.

No matter how much we try, we often have regrets in life.

Stanley my sex bunny friend often lives with such dilemma.

I regret sleeping with him - he's not that cute in retrospect. Maybe I was just drunk.
I regret not sleeping with him. He's so cute in retrospect. Maybe he was not that drunk. 

But I'm talking about more than such shallow regrets.

Bigger, deeper sort of regrets.  

Stanley tells me he too, has his fair share of very deep regrets.

I'm scared to know what he meant.

I write about the topic of regrets today because recently, it came up in a conversation with some friends over beer.

Because they were new friends I made here in Myanmar, I didn't share very much with them.

My regrets are quite personal.

And this one is my deepest.

When I was in secondary school, I discovered that I was different.

Gay.

And it was something I couldn't accept, often struggling to come to terms with it and always questioning why the hell I'm gay.

When I was 13, I made a vow to myself that I will fight this gayness.

And so, I did just that, fight being the operative word.

In school, I tried to man up with sports like track and field and Judo.

By 14, I was very good at Judo, not so good at track and field, but most importantly, I portrayed myself as a straight, sporty jock.

But that was not enough.

Deep in my heart, I am immensely afraid of being found out I'm gay.

So I decided to create distractions - by bullying the more effeminate guys in school, so that the attention is on them rather than me.

One of them is Kenneth.

Quiet, skinny and always minding his own business by being alone during recess and avoiding coming into contact with other boys.

But no. Kenneth's defensive and protective nature was non of my business.

I decided to be a big bully and started calling the poor boy names which I would never have wanted to be called.

The other boys whom I led were just happy to be part of a group and entertained by the sight of Kenneth squriming away from us.

The more Kenneth ran away from me, the more empowered I felt, and in retrospect, the more shameful I was.

But I was on such a high being the school jock (and school jerk) who nobody noticed was gay deep inside.

The name calling culminated in something more serious soon.

I can't remember what led me to doing it, but I recall leading my group of boys towards Kenneth during recess time.

I walked into Kenneth's classroom, broke coloured chalk into smaller pieces and handed them to my gang.

Kenneth, who was reading in class alone, physically recoiled by the sight of the seven of us surrounding him.

On my command, we threw chalk at him, mottling Kenneth's pristine-white school uniform with multiple coloured marks, each coloured splatter on his shirt a reminder of my dark secret.

Soon, I grew tired of bullying Kenneth and we all moved on.

But every time I thought about Kenneth, I felt deeply ashamed.

When I finally came to my senses as a young adult, it was too late.

Kenneth had blocked me when I tried to befriend him on Facebook years later. And when I saw him outside when we were in our early twenties, Kenneth avoided eye contact with me and quickly wriggled into the crowd to get away from his biggest tormentor.

Last I heard, Kenneth migrated after national service.

His Facebook account is seldom updated and his whereabouts unknown, since he didn't have many friends back in secondary school and no one knew much of him.

Today, as I type this, I am filled with regret for doing what I did to Kenneth.

Attacking someone like me who needed just as much protection from shame, discrimination and bullying is a cowardly act.

I have nothing but regret.

Kenneth will never know this.

And even if he does, I cannot expect Kenneth to forgive me for the unkind bullying I subjected him to.

The best apology I can offer is to never ever do this to anyone, and to stop bullying if I can see it.

Perhaps, not approaching Kenneth to say sorry to him is the best, the kindest, and most merciful apology to him.

Because if I do manage to say sorry to Kenneth, the only closure I get is for myself.

And then I walk away, leaving his healed scars open for him to bear.

Kenneth, I'm very, very, very sorry.

And you don't have to forgive me.

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Adam's stories are based on real life events and inspired by real people