I Still Feel Guilty About the Headphones

Okay, Sacred Posts, here goes nothing. I need to get this off my chest because it’s been eating at me for, like, fifteen years. It’s about a pair of headphones. Sounds stupid, right? It feels stupid even typing it, but… whatever.

When I was in high school, I wasn’t exactly rolling in dough. My family wasn’t poor, but we definitely weren’t rich. We had enough, but extras were rare. I really, really wanted a pair of Bose noise-canceling headphones. All the cool kids had them. I know, shallow, but that’s high school for you.

My best friend, let’s call him Mark, his family *was* rich. He got everything he wanted. And he had those headphones. He let me borrow them all the time, and I was so jealous. I’d sit on the bus, blasting music, pretending I was in my own little world, completely oblivious to the screaming kids and the awful smell of diesel. It was heaven.

One day, Mark left his headphones at my house. He was always doing stuff like that – losing things, forgetting things. He was just… careless. I knew I should give them back the next day, but then… I didn’t. I told myself I'd give them back later. Then I thought, "He has so much stuff; he probably won't even notice they're gone."

Days turned into weeks. He asked about them once, and I panicked. I lied. I told him I hadn’t seen them. He shrugged and said, "Oh well, probably just lost them again." He never mentioned it again.

I used those headphones for years. I told myself that finding them was like "finders keepers". I tried to convince myself that Mark was so privileged he wouldn’t have cared either way. He probably bought a new pair the next day, anyway. But deep down, I knew I was wrong. I knew I’d stolen something, and I’d lied about it.

I eventually sold the headphones when I went to college. I needed the money. That probably makes me even worse, right? I used the money to buy textbooks, so at least something good came of it. But it doesn’t erase the guilt. I still feel bad. I wish I had just asked my parents for the money or worked harder to earn it myself.

Mark and I aren’t really friends anymore. We drifted apart after high school. I wonder if he ever figured out what happened to those headphones. I wonder if he remembers. I’ve thought about reaching out and telling him the truth, but it feels so awkward after all this time. Would it even matter? Would it just make things weird? Maybe it’s better to just leave it in the past. But the past is still bugging me. So here I am, confessing to a website. Thanks for listening, I guess.