So she flickr mailed me asking if we were still friends. I responded with a long email about the reasons she had upset me. Things I've been holding in.
Our whole friendship has been like that. She upsets me and I never tell her about it. I haven't been harboring resentment, but I never did let these things go. I just bottled and ignored all my feelings. Things about how she would ditch me while she had boyfriends, even though she was my only friend at the time. She would change into someone I didn't like, ignore me and then come back once they would break up.
Once she met her husband, she changed into someone even better than the friend I'd had for the previous five years or so. She and I connected on a whole new level, and became the closest we'd ever been. She was my favorite person in the world. We did everything together and it was so awesome and fun. I did nothing but look forward, and all those bad memories were the absolute last thing on my mind. I don't think I thought about them once.
Then I moved to Illinois, and that was really hard on the both of us. Our friendship waned, she got pregnant and I started withdrawing from all my loved ones because of homesickness.
I would go out of my way to spend time with her when I'd visit, but as time went on, I started getting less fulfillment out of these visits. I think it's because of her daughter, which is completely understandable and I have no issues with that.
So the last time I visited home, in November, I spent a couple nights at her apartment in the very beginning of my visit. Things just didn't feel right. The whole time, I felt like we had grown apart without even realizing it. I think she felt it, too. Anyway, a week later, we were texting and she said she was in San Jose, and had been, at her dad's house. Which is a five minute drive from where I was staying with my mom. I was shocked, and a little hurt. And I kept hoping she'd suggest meeting for lunch or anything, but she didn't. Then I was really hurt. I started feeling resentful, and that's when all the old, bad memories surfaced. I wanted to talk to her about these things.
But of course, I didn't say anything, because I never have. I've never told her when she hurt me. Because there were a couple times when I did as a teenager, and she overreacted, took things out of context and those times really hurt our relationship. Until yesterday, I thought it was me misreading my memories or something. But she really can't take any sort of criticism about herself, which is funny, because she never told me the truth out of fear of hurting my feelings, too. So this whole time, we've been keeping things from each other in order to keep the other person happy.
In her last email, she said the whole friendship was fake, and at first I thought she was being overly dramatic, but it is kind of true. We spent a lot of energy making sure the other one wasn't hurt by our true feelings and opinions on things. It is a little ironic that when I finally do let out everything that has been kept inside, she decides she doesn't want to be my friend anymore. Mostly because she couldn't get over the fact that I was talking about things that happened 7, 8, 10 years ago. But I needed to let those issues out. I never have. And there isn't anything wrong with that, because I told her, now that they're out, I'm happy. I feel better. It's over. Let's let it all go. But I don't think she understood that, because she ended the relationship.
She feels like she can never be honest with me again, because (I assume) of fear I'll just bottle the emotion and bring it out in another decade. But I thought I made it clear that from now on I want nothing but to be honest with her. I suppose I wasn't clear enough. Or maybe she's taking things the way she wants to. She has a habit of doing that. I saw a lot of that in my last email. She put a lot of words in my mouth and got angry about them, even though they aren't true at all.
I just want to make it clear, I don't feel like the victim in this situation. I think we've both been changing in the last few years and we have turned into completely different people. But of course, I'm sad. I feel like a small part of my body is missing, honestly. I felt so empty last night.
After I read her email, my heart was jumpy, I felt really weak and I couldn't stop shivering. I honestly do feel like a little bit of me died. Whether or not we've been close as possible in the last year has nothing to do with how important she really is to me. She's been such a huge part of my life for the past decade and I can't look at a single part of the house without being reminded of her. No one got me like she did. I could tell her absolutely anything, and she would understand. We liked the same weird, obscure, quirky things. I felt like I was almost as close to her as I was to Mike, just on a different level. I felt like she and I were as close as sisters.
I'm hoping that eventually, she'll understand my side of the story and we can be friends again. I don't think we'll ever be best friends again, but I don't want to lose her for good.
