Forgiveness and friendship.
I will be the first person to admit that I have issues. Undoubtedly anyone else in my situation would have issues as well, so I guess I keep a decent check upon them. My freshman year of college I was violently raped, to be frank about it. I'm not ashamed of myself or the fact that it happened, nor do I feel like sugarcoating anything about the situation. My sophomore year of college, I met this guy and dated him a few times. Then, I got really drunk one night and passed out on his bed, awaking to his friend giving me oral sex. Neither of us remember if he had put it in or not, but either way the situation was bad and left me feeling freaked out for a while.
Anyway. This guy pretty much apologized to me ten billion times, because of how bad he felt. I forgave him, because I was sure that he was drunk at the time that it happened and didn't feel like he was a danger to myself or anyone else. Eventually, I began to talk to him about all of these issues of mine, we got really close and dated for about ten months.
He was messed up. Through our entire relationship, he was severely depressed and looked forward to seeing no one. Basically, he looked forward to nothing. He was pretty much looking forward to going to Iraq as a reserve of the Marine Corps to go die. He had issues much bigger than me and much bigger than I could handle, but I still gave him 110% of myself and tried to help and make him feel better (even though I now realize no one could ever him him. He even scares away shrinks). No matter how many times he'd tell me he didn't care if I existed, I persisted anyway.
He broke up with me, according to him, because he was preparing to die and didn't want me around for that because he liked me too much and didn't want to add to my issues. He shot himself, when some friends found him and called 911. One week after this happened, he was dating this female friend of his who I had felt like he was placing before me while we were still together. Therefore, in my mind, I saw him cheating on me with this girl who wasn't even half as pretty as me in my own eyes. It irritated me and caused me more issues.
Last night, after not talking to him for about six months, out of the blue... he apologizes to me about everything, about how I'm the nicest and most loyal anyone has ever been to him and how he would like my friendship. I forgave him for what he did to me, even though it caused me a lot of pain, because I guess I felt as though life is to short to constantly hold a grudge about something.
However, I don't feel as though he would deserve my friendship. I feel like there's nothing that I need to rely on him for, nor would I trust him enough to do that. I realized that after I said I forgave him and he apologized.... all it did was make me cry about the fact that I so easily forgave him about everything when I probably should not have.
So... I guess what I'm asking is....
Does it make you a mean person if you just don't want to be friends with someone who hurt you? He's still the same guy: very depressed. I'm not sure if I can handle that or not, because it's in my nature to try to help too much. Also, he's still with that same girl who I feel like he had cheated on me with, so whenever he even vaguely mentions her, I can't help but make fun of her because it's how I dealt with the pain was by doing that. I just... it makes me feel bad that I don't want to be his friend and all he can talk about is missing my friendship or needing it. I feel like I just can't give it for my own selfish reasons. Is this acceptable? I have my own issues that I'm constantly working on and for the most part, while there are time periods where I get down on life because of everything that's happened and how nothing is ever really that easy to me... I'm happy. I guess I'm scared.