Let me just begin by saying, that I have been a much happier man since learning of the marriage of a long believed friend. For in her marriage meant that a vow I had once made to her was now allowed to end. It has meant that my life could now go on.

Writing about anything that can take on a form of being religious is not an easy task when it is impossible for man to prove the existance of God; the creator to everything we can see, smell, touch, hear, and taste. For this one friend, Audrey, I have been accused of destroying a friendship. I am willing to take on that judgement if it means that down the road she will come to know, who that creator is and has always been, for her own self and if she can come to accept the gift that God offers to all. To many I suppose, I am what some might call a Bible Thumper, in that I am someone who reads and believes in what the Bible says. I have been a Christian for almost my entire life. One of the things that the Bible states is that we must be willing to forsake all for Jesus Christ; that if we want to save our life, then we must be willing to lose it. There are many things out in the universe that man does not yet understand, but just becuase man may not understand it, that does not make it any less true.

This is not going to be a page on religion, but it is important that you know what motivates me and the reasons to "Why". My belief is that God, is an all-knowing God, who knows all the possible outcomes to billions of permutation of possibilities and that He is seeking a certain kind of soul, a certain kind of spirit to serve Him forever. The Bible speaks of the gifts of the spirit as being Wisdom, Knowledge, Faith, Healing, Miracles, Profescy, Discernment of Spirits, Speaking in Tongues, Interpreting Tongues. You may learn more by referring to 1 Corinthians 12:8-10, and Ephesians 4:7-13 and Romans 12:3-8 of the Bible. These gifts of the Spirit come from the Holy Spirit [a part of God, if you will]. We are all created for a purpose and when the situation calls for it, certain of these attributes or gifts of the Spirit are developed within our life experiences. Align with the gifts of the Spirit are what the Bible calls the Fruits of the Spirit. Unfortunately, I have never believed that Audrey had ever demonstrated the fruits of the spirit nor in the gifts of the spirit. What do you think when you see the word "Spriit"? It is just as impossible to prove as is the concept of God. I wish that there was no Hell! I wish there was no force to compel me to sin either.

How would you act if you truly believed that a friend was going to be burned to death? Would you try to warn him/her to take preventative measures with each new sunrise? While my friend Audrey may be under the bridge as far as my own life may go, I can't help but hope that someday before it is too late, that she will come to understand Jesus Christ as her own personal savior. Why do we believe in anything presented to us?

Only the Holy Spirit is capable of being so subtle as to guide a soul to salvation. I believe that much of the incapability that Audry and I posessed to one another may very well come from the differences in beliefs we hold to be true.

How will I be judged when I stand before my Maker to give an account for the time spent pining away for a young lady who was afraid of me so much that she could never speak this truth? Never before in my life had I ever been told that any of my actions or bursts of emotions was ever so great so as to frighten an individual. In the end I was branded by some as being a Betrayer of a Friendship, or someone who destroyed a friendship of a young girl who had one time befriended me. Was I capable of frightening her into denying that there was anything wrong these 20 years? What puts a desire to lie or deny the truth in the hearts of an individual? My most recent relationship now under the bridge concerns a young lady; her name Audrey. I say "lie" because it was the truth for which I was really searching but never finding.

I am writing this account; both to further set my own spirit to rest and as a means for giving clarification of what was going on within my own mind and heart during these same 20 years. Given what I now understand to be the truth I can see how some of my actions might have been misjudged. As I can assume that Audrey will never come to these web pages, I am hoping that her husband Henri might find time to view what I have to write here. Let me be the first to thank Henri, the now husband to my then friend Audrey for being honest enough with me about what she was really feeling about me now. Audrey's modivations may not have been as sincere as she might otherwise want to make it appear. If you want to learn why, (click here)!

I was not some piller of social independant strength in my youth and in a different way I do not believe that Audrey was either. How we dealt with acceptance and rejection of ideas and personal values expressed by friends and family seemed to be uncomprehendable to her and the more I showed an interest in how she was feeling, in learning more about her past experiences, the more strained I felt the friendship became. Audrey was not the first young lady that I came to deeply care, but it came at a time in my own life when all I wanted was to see and to hear the truth and not some attempt at pittying me. When I was asking to be allowed to back away, I wanted her to cooperate with me in allowing me to back out as far as I felt the need to back out, and believe that she would still be a friend to me. I was not some trophy for her to hold over a mantle of a man's heart on display for her friends to see. My wishes were not simply someting to ignore. I wanted her to show the same degree of respect to me that I tried to hold for her. Today I wonder if I have had my perspective totally out of place. All during these 20 years I have been looking at Audrey as my equal, but in fact she was 10 years younger than I and maybe she was intimidated by my size. Maybe she was terrified of what I was capable of doing. She never expressed anything that gave me that impression.

Audrey seemed to feel that by ignoring a problem and situations that they would simply go away. My own life experiences as well as from my own academic studies in Speech Communication had taught me that that does never happens. It did not matter in the form of communication that was being presented to her. If it required her to respond to a letter, to a phone call she would always react as if it was some kind of demand being made to her that was unacceptable of her. At the very core of this, I suppose that the only thing that is ever being asked in communication is in the time it would take to read the letter or the time it would take to finish the phone call. I would have liked to have been able to take her away from all the stress I felt she was having to face at home and at school.

Audrey seemed to function like a thurrowbread race horse pushed for speed and performance. She never seemed to slow down for anything. She was definitely an achiever but at what price? I had been on a long academic journey of my own as well and I did not know if it was ever going to end. I knew of that same commitment to excellance as Audrey did and so I tried to respect that goal she had. My own academic goal would take an additional ten years to reach.

I do not know why Audrey chose to take on my friendship back in 1984. We had initially met while I was waiting for her boss; Martha Stanton, who worked as the Resident Director for the southwest dormatiories of the University of Washington in 1984 and for which Audrey served as one her Resident Advisors to Mercer Hall.

My involvement and interest in visiting with Martha Stanton in Terry Hall/Lander Hall complex came about from my own years of living within the University of Washington dormatory system; a period that continued for 24 accademic quarters. Over that time I had come to know many of the staff that worked for the Housing and Food Services. When I came down to see the staff that now ran the Terry/Lander Hall facilities it was just after I had moved off campus to take a break from college life and the demands it had placed on me the prior ten years.

Each time that I would come over to visit Martha I would naturally see Audrey from time to time performing her dutines as the RA (Resident Advisor) to Mercer Hall and as such Audrey and I would strike up a conversation with her and it was not long before I could begin to tell that Audrey had a very interesting personality and a personality that was complimentary to my own. At that time, though I had heard through "the grape vine" that she was already involved in a relationship to amother man and so I chose not to make any direct attempt to see her for the next nine months.

At the end of that academic year I decided to go up to her dorm room to be brief and wish her a comfortable Finals Week, and to my surprise she had already finished taking her Final Exams for all of her classes, and so for the next week I would spend usually three hours a day, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday where we would speach of our respective lilfe styles; each one of us even drawing in rough outline how our parents' homes appeared.

For me, the next seven years would be relaxing; to do what ever interested me. As computer programming had been an interesting academic subject, I continue to find access to the university computers and I began to take my own interest of Business to develop a business application for the real world, that meant that the paths of Audrey and myself were frequently crossing. It happened so often, in fact, that I would find it amusing, smiling sometime when our paths would cross. It was my daily practice to get up in the morning and walk between the Southwest Dormatories facilities, through the west entrance to the UW campus by their "Frosh Pond" to the IEEE building where they had established a computer lab. Audrey's father had helped her get a job position as a secretary in one of the UW departments and so I would see her as I would be going over to have lunch at the Husky Union Building (HUB). It was also here that I had an account to a People Bank branch found here as well. For Audrey, it seemed as if some of her own responsibilities required to conduct business with Lowel Hall, just behind the HUB. Every time seeing her on my way to or from the Electronical Engineering Department (IEEE building) I couldn't help but smile at her as we would pass. These memories were very strong for me and very pleasant ones as well.

It is sad to now suspect that all of my efforts to be a loyal friend to her were never recieved as they had been intended. I do not believe that Audrey has ever been able to understand how I might be able to be angry at God today, even when in a rage against God's actions around my life without also being angry at her for being an instigator of that same kind of rage those twenty years ago. I had once tried to express this idea to her in a letter. If she had not danced around the subject of her getting married and had only been honest to me, that much of the discomfort she may have felt could have been avoided. For as long as she has hated me I think that all of this had been poetic justice, because I was only trying to reach out to her as a friend. I never stopped caring for her.

Audrey is not responsible for what God does even if God may choose to use her within my life. God is the one that created Robert Wright. God is the one what created Audrey Christiansen. God orchestrated all the events that happened in my life. Audrey was simply a pawn used by God as was I in performing God's will, wheater that will might have been. If she ever feared of this capacity for anger, then her own fears were served to haunt her whenever I would try to contact her. Today I believe that God may have been protecting me from the influence she would probably have had on my Christian life and cthis might have been ounterproductive to His Will.

For what Audrey did give me, I hold great Love and admiration in what it did do for my emotions. Overall, now that I believe I have all the truths to my actual relationship with Audrey, she had a big wide frame of a man for a friend (me) that while he never felt or was ever led to believe that he intimidated her or anyone by his size, did in fact frighten Audrey so much, that when this man wanted to repair the relationship with her, she was still afraid of what she believed he might do to her in the future having had this prior account. Audrey never informed the man that what the man had done to her emotionally had ever frighten her. Audrey when asked about her feelings towards me (this man) after all of this cruel letter event had been done, denied that she hated him. I had stated to her "I guess you must have been pissed off by my letter" trying to give her own feelings of anger about the matter validation and trying to take responsiblility for getting her angry since it was that emotion that was addressed. The many letters that Audrey had been collecting from me were destroyed, I had believed was from her anger at what I had done through in the last letter written to her. Now, I wonder if it was not out of doubt that she could ever believe in the many kind thoughts I would often express to her in letter and in word.

The one thing that does bring the most sadness to me is in how I feel that Audrey never quite understood the motives I had for always searching her out over the many years I did. It was not that I might be some kind of salker; or some kind of posssessive spouse of her's. I was not married to her! I had no obligations to her, whatsoever! My motives came from a promise I had made to her just prior to the emotional explosion I expressed to her in a letter, when I believed that she did not wish me to get out of her life completely. I had my reasons for wanting to back off from her life, and if from not reading my prior letters I had written to her where I had often expressed this wish or where I had expressed many of my concerns, or from the stresses from her own parents on her life; she never seemed to make this process easy for me. Because my own father had abandoned my mother when I was but about three years old; not wanting to be a Father or in the responsibilities of being a Father, I was more aware of those feelings of abandonment a person might feel as another individual begins to back out of their life. I saw the affect that this kind of treatment could have on a woman as I was growing up with just a single mother. I did not want Audrey to ever think that I no longer liked her. I did not want Audrey to ever think that I would ever abandon a friendship either. I simply felt an emotional need to back away as what I wanted to give to Audrey in my friendship to her was never being appreciated and this difference was simply killing me inside. It was constantly breaking my heart.

As I have been discussing intent in the previous paragraph, allow me to briefly add by saying the letter that finally severed to break this friendship was never meant to bring fear into her life of me, but only to make her angry enough at me to finally push me far enough away so that my heart would stop breaking into so many little pieces. Rarely did Audrey ever verbally express any wishes of me; and rarely did Audrey ever express any degree of emotions to me either. We had different belief systems and so we rarely spoke about religious issues because of this, but she was always making me feel as if I was on cloud nine. She only seemed to know how to give, yet never knowing how to recieve from another. And what she gave me when she did give me anything was always a surprise and never taken for granted and I did all I could to express this appreciation to her! When she would open up to me and tell me of her relationship to her parents she conveyed to me a relationship where anytime she was given anything from her parents, there was always a catch, or condition they would demand of her. Whether true or not, this explanatioin to me at least seemed to fit her actions around me.

Audrey was acting out of fear during all of this 18 year period. Robert (me), I was trying to reach out to her as a friend to her. This man was not bringing up the subject of the letter over and over to continue to frighten her, but was trying to instill peace within her soul about that period of her life. It was an ugly part for both of our lives. It did not please me one bit to be moved to express such ugly thoughts as I had felt at the time.

I hope that one day she can read what I have written here and that she will allow herself to know that she does have a friend in me. In either case, God does know this of my heart to be true. Recently a remembrance of something I had once discussed with Audrey came to mind on the difference of personalities the two of us had back then. I did not want to give up on the idea that Audrey could never change, nor did I want to believe in the impossibility that her emotions towards me might ever change. She wanted me to forget her; to give up on the idea that she would ever see the same way that I saw her. Though I knew each day over these years that she did return the same effections as I had for her, my willingness to forgive and my willingness to forget was always open to her. God, by keeping me ignorant to why I could get so angry as it had been with my brother, made it possible for me to become angry one more time. When you can understand why you can get angry, it then becomes possible to make changes in the very way you look at anything. Had I known this answer back then, I doubt that I would ever have reached to point of writing "that letter". I would have lowered my expectations of her. Why would God want to hide the truth from anyone? This thought has confounded me, because it even was expressed in this manner within the Bible.

I have to wonder whether or not it might have been the Will of God that I never be accepted into Audrey's heart; that some aspect to the willful spirit of Audrey might not be accepting of God either. What ever the answer might be, the one thing that she had said some twenty years later that did prove to be true, was that she doubted that she would ever see me the way I saw her. She with her doubt for change versus my willingness for change. If it is Audrey's fate to go to Hell, sadly I never remember her for that too is expressed in the Bible. If people continue to ignore the cries to the existance of a fire burning eventually it will become impossible for them to escape the fire.

Audrey has not been the first woman for whom I have cared deeply, and who had later gotten married to another man. At one point her husband, Henri would tell me that "I ruined what could have been a wonderful friendship". I would debate the word "wonderful" with him if given the chance. When she would open up to me on any subject, yes I truly enjoyed those moments, but they were rare moments. What makes her friendship with me different from Reagan (a friendship I developed ten years earlier while attending Olympic Community College) was that Reagan's actions were consistant with her words and Reagan would actually talk to me and would make efforts to find me to ask me to go with her to the local Pancake House at 10:30PM. It was hard on me to see her eventually get married too, but the channels of communication were always open between us even during her marriage. If I felt a need to back away from Reagan for a time, Reagan never made any attempt to pull me back to her as Audrey had appeared to frequently do.

Today, I get fussed over sometimes more than I want from some women but I know that there is some aspects to my personaility that they are all able to enjoy and appreciate even though I may take them for granted. I do not consider myself to be anyone special. I know of my abilities. I know of my limitations as well. When a woman then will tell me that my voice may have a calmig affect on them, though I have never liked hearing my own voice, I am pleased to know that they enjoy hearing it. I have also befriended some women that have called me relentlessly on the phone, it seemed, from women with low self esteems. While they were too much for me as well, their actions still agreed with what they say. If they said they liked me a lot, they would not then appear to shove me away when I might want to be alone with them. I could understand much about their feelings giving them acceptance whenever I could as well as validating their feelings at the same time. When I felt forced to take action in distancing myself from them, I would tell them Don't call me. Let me call you." and I would tell them what to expect and then follow up on what I said I would do.

Sometimes I would have a wonderful time listening to them as they tell me how they tried to come over to surprise me at home the night before; sometimes in a slightly drunken state or in how they hitch hiked a ride with a Sheriff to get to my home, only to find that I was not home. A woman that I had met that would fit this discription was a June Roberts. In her situation she was married to a lumber jack of a husband who would fall asleep while making love to her. I saw her own vulnerability and with the grace of God was never home when she did come to visit. Three times she tried to catch me home with the intention of flashing me as I open the door to greet her, and three times I would hear the details the following night. When I would laugh it was never at her, but in the irony of it all. How this friendship originally began was while rollerskating at local skating rink and a few days later calling to find her younger sister not at home and that her older sister had come over to visit with her mother. Before we would end the phone call she had given me her phone number encouraging me to call there.