Not so much a friend

When Gabe told me that he couldn't be friends with me any more because I was atheist and he was a Protestant, and that I was weakening him spiritually, I was actually not at all upset. Well, I felt a little sad, but only out of guilt for not feeling sad in the first place.

Yeah, I'm that kind of person.

Since I knew he had been having problems with keeping up with the super-devout level of his family, I realized he was just trying to be a better person. So while I didn't agree with him ditching all his atheist friends, I saw what he was going through and tried to support him.

But then something made me lose all respect for him.

I was at Heather's birthday party, rocking out. Heather's Catholic, and we're best friends (though it's impossible to meet this girl and NOT be friends with her - she's constantly happy. A human Prozac). She knew about the whole issue with Gabe - in fact, she'd tried to talk him out of doing what she thought was extremely stupid of him. But anyway, he was still supposed to show up at her sweet sixteen. But he didn't. Even though he promised, he didn't.

So we called him on speakerphone, everybody wanting to tease him for being MIA. But he sounded incredibly bitter and rude on the phone, and when Katy jokingly said, "What's more important than your friend's birthday?" he hung up.

For the first five seconds, it was incredibly funny.

Then the enormity of it all hung over us, and we started gaping at the phone. Heather looked absolutely shocked before she said in a fuming voice, "I can't believe he did that!" And Heather is never angry. Seeing her angry was definitely the equivalent of seeing a diehard Christian burn their bible. It's just not supposed to happen.

Other things happened, of course, but now I've lost all respect for him. And so has Heather, who normally holds everybody in high esteem. I've lost my best friend of four years, and I find that, well, I don't feel very much except for anger at this point. At how stupid I've been to even have had a crush on him in the first place, how foolish I was to blindly ignore his many faults - and these faults weren't small things, they were things that would have turned away many others. But I stupidly stayed with him.

I feel almost disgusted with myself now.

And silly as it seems, it's become my goal at OCS to get a higher rank/position than him, no matter what. I know I can do it. It's not like I'm going to abuse my power when I'm with him, but I know that if he somehow manages to secure a higher position, he's going to abuse the hell out of me. I can't let that happen. This is my small chance to stand up for myself in his face, to stand up for the things he's done to Liz and Heather and so many others. I must be his superior, because we're only going to have JROTC together next year.

Come inspection time, he'll be the one that takes orders from me.