People never realize that a broken friendship can be way worse than a relationship. When your at school anyway.
I met and 'fell in love' with my then best-friend Alice when I was fourteen.
We were in the same class for three years. Those years were spent mildly disliking each other for two months, a full half-year as happy palls, another year fighting and then the rest of the time as close friends.
I was in friendship heaven. I had found the one girl I could relate to and who understood me. This girl was unlike any other. Instead of shunning me, because of my shy demeanour and awkward social skills, Alice took me under her wing and I blossomed.
Then along came 'The Athlete'. He wasn't really her type, but maybe that was exactly what fascinated her. And the fact that he had the body of a god.
That's when it all got sour.
At first I was all for the relationship, as any good friend would be. I thought her settling down with a guy that acted like such a gentleman wouldn't be half bad.
So then at some point she became this jealous person that I could hardly recognise anymore. Who was she? This girl who had never cared what anybody thought, who had had no beef with anybody and loved the world? She's changed into something else. Maybe that's how love changes one, for better or worse.
She wouldn't break up with him, or at least, never for good. Not when he treated her like shit. Not even when she thought she couldn't trust him with one of her friends or when he didn't show up for their one year anniversary, without any explanations. She kept telling me how scared she was of commitment (then they would break up), or how she was scared she wouldn't ever find love again (then they would get back together again). This cycle kept repeating itself until, finally, she called it quits. I was super happy, you have no idea.
Throughout their relationship I had felt like her emotional sponge. At the end I just couldn't keep up with the emotional roller coaster of hating the guy one moment and watching them smooch the next. It was clear to me, even if it wasn't to her, that she deserved better. That she needed to move on to greener fields.
Throughout their relationship I had felt like her emotional sponge. At the end I just couldn't keep up with the emotional roller coaster of hating the guy one moment and watching them smooch the next. It was clear to me, even if it wasn't to her, that she deserved better. That she needed to move on to greener fields.
Their relationship was the turning point for our friendship. After it nothing was the same. During it, friends counted for less. Alice didn't go out with us girls anymore. She sat at home waiting for him to call. Not only was I disgusted by this change in her, but I felt forgotten. We had been so close and the absence there now was broke into me. It made me feel incomplete. She had, after all, been the person to enlighten me to the wonders of blogging. Our blogs somehow kept us in sync and up to date on each other's lives. Ironically, it was because of a blog that we inevitably broke apart.
For a long time I tried to grasp Alice's attention to the fact that I missed her and that, selfishly, I felt left behind. Looking back I can see how I could be jealous. She had always been there for me and then one day I had her no more. She gave her all to someone else, while I gave my everything to her. Obviously, for many reasons, I decided not to state my frustrations in those exact words. I blogged myself into a misery, copy-pasting lyrics from Allanis Morset to Dashboard Confessional, thinking she would get the hint. At that time in my life I just really neaded I friend. Needless to say, she didn't catch my hint.
So one day I pulled her down and said, "We need to talk." No, this was is not where our friendship ended. After I explained my feelings to her she did change. Suddenly things were back to the way they were... and yet not quite right. It felt weird. Strange. I didn't know how to act around her anymore. It was as if the changes we both had uundergone, me becoming more independent of her, had somehow come between us. Atleast, that's how it felt to me. I wanted to figure it out together. I took the same path as I had before and told her how I felt. This time round she interrupted me and asked that we not continue the conversation, because I was hurting her feelings. It puzzled me. I hadn't even got around to explaining felt wrong.
Later that same day I read her blog entry... and gasped. She had obviously been frustrated by the day's events and had vented it on her blog. She even sweared at me! It got me fairly upset. I mean, she knew I read her entries. Had she wanted me to feel like a friggin' asshole biatch?
I was over the edge. All the soppy depro songs in the world couldn't help me now. I created a new blog and for the first time in months I said exactly how I felt. What this entailed was about five or six literal abuses in her general direction. I was so angry, but even more sad, because I couldn't believe how she could care so little about my feelings. It came as a shock that two people who once shared everything to each other could so misunderstand each other.
What I didn't know was that Alice had randomly come across my blog and connected the dots. She knew, even with my fake identity and all, that I was the author. I didn't know it then, but it was the reason behind her acting strangely around me.
For every snide comment I made, she thought I was talking about her. Every bad spot in my blog was a dedication to her, or atleast that's how she must have felt. None of the compliments I gave her she could believe were her's. The point of my blog had never been to publicly humiliate her. No one we knew even read our blogs.
Only, that was not the way she saw it. One faithful day after yet another of my depressing moments of realising where our friendship had gone and blogging about it, she fought back! Lo and behold the three entry face-slapping-extravaganza. At the end of the last one she said she wouldn't EVER bother me again and ruin my life. And then she said "... friendship over".
It was all over. Everypart of me she had inspired turned to dust. The finality fo it all was certain. I have never felt so hurt before in my life... or so selfish. I started thinking: how could I have been so horrible to her? Then it hit me. I had done absolutely nothing wrong. I had been human. A human with human emotions and human feelings. I had never meant to hurt her, yet she hurt me intentionally. For the first time I realised that the person I had trusted most in the world had a secret ability: she made every single issue about her. Our friendship had never been between two people. It consisted of me basically worshipping her. Even when the most important thing in my life was on the rocks she couldn't see past her own foolish inabilities. She placed insecure people around her, maybe so she wouldn't feel so imperfect. She never notived how utterly perfect and great she was. Secretly I was glad to be out of all the drama. Our friendship had started to become a wy of making each other feel better about ourselves. I could not get past that. Not then. She explained my thoughts and my feelings in such a way that made me look really, really sad. She had never understood me. It had made me misunderstand myself. I had been addicted to the endorphin rush she supplied and like any addiction it hadn't been good for me.
After our friendship crashed I realized who my true friends were. People who didn't necessarily get me all the time, but who kept me from giving in to the feelings that would destroy me. The ones who would poke fun at my lack of bra size, but who would also make me feel like the most beautiful girl in the room.
I decided that I would never again be place in the position of being so dependant on someone who couldn't return the favour. To put all my eggs in one person's basket. Life is too short to surround one's self with people that do not make you happy.
"Never regret something that once made you smile." The strange thing is, I don't. Alice and I had good times. I'll always be grateful to her for teaching me that it was OK to be myself, when everyone else thought differently. Friendships allow those bound by it, even when its done, to keep the lessons and memories with them.
Labels: Friendships
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