When I realised I was gay, I was homophobic to a classmate. Should I apologise, 25 years on?

‘A lot of the bad stuff we do can be understood and explained. But we can’t expect the people we’ve hurt to take that bird’s-eye view.’ Painting: The Passion of Creation, 19th century, by Leonid Pasternak. Photograph: Alamy

When I was between 11 and 14 years old I realised I was gay and was deeply in the closet; I was terrified of being outed. There was another male student in my class whom I read as also gay, but also not out. For two years I did all I could to separate myself from him, ignore him and, ultimately, which I realised later, to try to throw suspicion off me. I spread rumours about him and encouraged others to ostracise him. Soon afterwards I went to another school and we lost all contact.

Since then I’ve grown into a proud gay man and, from his social media, it seems he has too. I have wanted to reach out to him for years and apologise for my actions and if they affected him, but should it just be left alone 25 years after the fact?