I was just thinking about the friends I've lost back when I used to be more conservative in my beliefs. This was during a time where I was still quite religious, having been raised up in the church, and so, as you can imagine, my views leaned towards right wing conservatism. At the time, I simply saw these beliefs as the cold hard truth. Since 2020 however, I have had a fundamental shift in my views, brought on partially by the pandemic. I had already started losing my faith before this happened, but in early 2020, my church closed down, and it stayed shut for an entire year. This period of time really pushed me further into my atheism, and eventually I decided I would not be returning to church when it opened back up.

Something else that happened, is that I began to see my views shift towards the left. During this most recent election, the candidate I voted for unfortunately did not end up winning. For the sake of not starting any political debates in the comments, I won't say by name, but I think you can pretty easily guess who that certain someone is. I found myself agreeing with the feminist fight for women's equality, equality for LGBTQIA+ people (myself being in the community), and the fight against non-white racial discrimination. I agree with causes that fight against global warming, and I believe that women should have the right to choose over their own bodies. I have learned about the scientific consensus that sex and gender are two separate things, with gender being more of a social construct, and this made me open my eyes to the fact that, there aren't only two genders, but in fact, an infinite number of gender expressions and identities.

And so, this leads me back to the start of this journal. I had friends whilst I was a conservative, and my conservatism pushed them away. I deeply regret this, and I sincerely wish that these people could see how much I have changed as a person, how much I've grown over the years. I know that no matter how different my views are Now, I cannot change my past, and unfortunately that means that these people who choose to stop being friends with me, are just gone. I will never reach out to them to see how they're doing, or to catch up with them after high school, because I know they will never want to talk to me.