Failings that I can never escape

I have, deep within and hidden from others, always been a careless person. I have ruined small scams, friendships, business transactions, and other similar things all because I could not keep my mouth shut or read the room properly. Granted, most of this was back when I was young, foolish, and naive. Nevertheless, one's failings always find a way to haunt one until the end of time. And circumstances and situations that bring such memories to fore, that draw parallels to past mistakes, sting all the more painfully in the immediate moments after they happen.
 
I have offended someone last night, someone that I respect and genuinely enjoy the company of. Offended may not quite be the proper word--perhaps upset, disappointed, or discouraged him. And while I do not know him overly well, I had no knowledge that the situation that caused him discomfort would affect him so thoroughly. To see a normally spirited and charismatic man be brought low by a conversation spoken out of careless impropriety is a sorrowful and unhappy thing to witness. I failed to read the room. Failed to read the relationships between the people I care about. And though one may argue that it was impossible for me to have known the depth of his emotional investment and that I am thus ultimately blameless, that I am ultimately not responsible for the reactions of others, it is painful to know my role in causing the trouble--it eats away at my mind, a pervasive and icy needle of guilt that pierces the skull and embeds itself, ready to stab and cut away for weeks after the incident.
 
I tried to encourage him, tried to show him that there is hope. That his mood need not fall, that he need not think all is lost. I watched, to my heart's despair, him put up a mask of cordiality, an attempt at returning to the way he was before the inciting statements, but it was to no avail. I do not know what he was thinking, but I saw an agony that moves the hearts of every fey creature, great and small, to tears. We, as beings of wild emotion, can be very sensitive to the moods of others; many of us possess great empathy and consideration for the mental and emotional well-being of our fellows. And to know that someone is suffering is to feel as broken and despondent as they may be.
 
Am I a terrible person? Am I discourteous, doomed to harm those around me? I have spent so long looking after myself and the circus family, I at times wonder if I can adjust to society at large. The circus knows me well, they accept my eccentricities, they can read me better than anyone can. But those not of the family, well...
 
How deep does this maze of relationships that connects he and I go? Does he love both of the women that I do, and if so, will I appear as an obstacle to him? I don't want to be an obstacle. I don't want to be seen as a rival. I want to be seen as a friend. I want to be a comrade, a person he can confide in. Someone he can turn to and open up to when times grow tough. The way friends do. The way family--real family--does. Hells, were I a younger... whatever I am... and if he were not a noble, I would likely have made a pass at him already. But I fear that all is ruined, all is shattered before me like a fragile mirror. And in each shard of glass, I see the person responsible for the destruction.
 
I see myself. And all the horror and discourtesy and impropriety I hide within me. I see the thief, the scoundrel, the liar glaring back at me in those thousand jagged fragments.
 
Should I pray to the gods for a solution? I should at least apologize, though I fear he may not want to even look at me--at the very least not me in my natural state. I shall try. The only thing I can do is try. It is on him to decide if he wants to accept.
 
Gods, what a bloody mess.