When looking back everything seems so insignificant and stupid, the things you did, the reasons you did them, everything is so much easier to understand and make the right decision. We all have those memories where in hindsight the decision is clear but for some reason you didn't make it.

I was in the seventh grade and while I can blame my decision making on the fact that I was a stupid middle schooler just trying to be cool I wont allow that to make up for the way I acted.At the time I had a few friends and two best friends. One of them we’ll call David, he was very well liked and his parents were pretty wealthy so his house was usually the most fun. My other friend we’ll call him Niko, he had a rougher home life but i could always have a more real conversation with him. Instead of talking about the newest video games or cartoons, but with Niko we could talk about our lives and feelings.

Me and Niko were both pretty into music, I was decent at bass and Niko was a fantastic guitarist, it was just about all he did, practice guitar and schoolwork was his freetime. One summer day we were just talking about music and what not when Niko says “You know, if we got a drummer and a singer we could start a band”, I thought about that for a second and figured it sounded fun so I agreed.

We quickly found a drummer, he even offered to host practices because both his parents were usually not home till six pm and he had some music equipment at his place, he wasn't really a close friend just someone we both got along with and wanted to play in our band. Me and Niko decided to take turns singing. After some time we got to really get good, we had a simple yet solid reptore.

Soon David found out and decided he wanted to be in the band, he really put in a lot of hours to be able to be decent at guitar, so he became the band's rhythm guitarist. The Drummer and I liked David but Niko never really got along with him, they were both too different to hold a conversation. Besides the rare argument everything was going good we'd go to the drummers house most days after school and hang and play.
We were really just the average garage band, we had arguments, we wrote terrible songs, we tried to be as loud as possible, we had fun. we grunge music which is ironic because now I can't stand grunge music, its too sloppy, the singing is terrible, Nirvanas extremely overrated, but one of the bigger reasons is because it reminds me of my terrible mistake.

Eventually David started getting into more fights with Niko. When one day when me and david were walking home from school he says, “Hey if you guys want we could start having practice at my house. And it made sense his house was the closest, had the best food, had all the newest video games, the nicest basement, had the least people to be bothered by our playing, so it seemed like a good idea. We had a band meeting and decided to switch the place to Davids. Niko wasn't totally on board with the idea but said we could give it a try.

So we moved the gear to davids and for a while everything went well. We were improving as a band and individually, when one day David decides he doesn't want Niko to be in the band, Everything band related was put on hold, we tried to talk with and reason with David as Niko hadn't done anything mean or wrong to anyone.

After a week or two David invited me and the drummer to his house and said “If we can get Niko out of the group then I can convince my parents to get us new equipment”. as I said before his parents were pretty wealthy and this meant new amps, new guitars, new drums, new pedals, mixing equipment, microphones. This could be huge for the group but we’d be kicking the best player from the group. Niko was even in the process of writing songs and he was a much better singer than i was even when he was playing guitar.

The drummer decided that he would be fine with kicking Niko out but I said I had to think about it. There were a thousand reasons not to do it, Niko was a lot better, Niko was alot easier to work with, Niko was a lot funner, Niko was a lot nicer, but most of all Niko was a better friend. I told Niko about the decision I was going to make. He wasn't that mad at me, he was more sad, which made me feel even worse. I don't remember how I rationalized it, maybe I figured friends never last, which is true when you treat them like that.

I told David that Nikos out of the group and he was pretty happy. His parents took us to guitar center and we got a new drum set, a couple guitars and a couple amps. I always think how it wasn't nearly worth it. The band was only together for a couple months till David got tired and called it quits. Ni.ko moved several hours away before I could apologize in person, recently I found him on facebook and I must have spent hours typing out an apology longer than this essay and being worried about sending it. I did send it and a couple hours later he accepted it, we message each other occasionally and are planning on hanging out sometime over the summer. Im really glad I could get closure on this part of my life because without it Id always be feeling like a jerk who dumped his best friend and didn't have the guts to apologize.