I only hope that somehow during these last ten years he learned how to be a better human being.  I can only hope that.  Still, it makes me chuckle.  It wasn't that he hurt me.  It was that he was a hypocrite.  I remember long before we were no longer friends he used to talk about how friendship was golden, that a man should consider his friends his true wealth, and that one should never abandon a friend in need.  I remember the many times he defended me.  But as soon as someone new came into the picture... *POOF!*  The silence on the phone.  The unreturned calls.  The deliberate turn of his back when I last talked to him.  And later when he saw me at my place of business, the stubborn audacity to stand there and smile at me yet ignore me as he made damn sure to talk to everyone else there in the room... Oh, the uncomfortableness!

His behavior toward me gave me something of a complex.  Social anxiety set in as I tried to understand what it was that was so wrong about me to deserve such abandonment from a long trusted friend. 

I don't hate him, I just don't understand how he could go on to counsel others with disorders like mine when he deliberately went out of his way to damage me the way he did.  I just find it so ironic!

Good thing I did google him because I was thinking about moving to Madison and possibly finishing my degree there.  Last thing I'd want is a run-in with someone from my past.  Oh, if I met him today I wouldn't cry, I'd probably scream... with angry laughter.

Now this has got me thinking about the past and how surreal it all was.  I always had the feeling that Tom moved to Madison to get away from not me but people who knew him too well.  Moving to another city is oftentimes the thing to do to start over.  Oh, I must share a strange story with you now, but it's going to take a whole different blog entry to do it...