Sunday, January 31, 2016

To the ones who surprised me in really bad ways...

You still won't admit you did anything wrong, but I think there's a part of you in there somewhere who knows I was right in saying what I did to you. I had to. I could see myself becoming again the girl I promised I'd stop reverting to and you becoming the guy that I keep trying to get away from. It took me six years to get out of it last time, and I'm still trying to put myself back together from that; I'm not going to let someone else come in and tear down all the work I've put into rebuilding myself.

I don't think you're a bad person. I don't think this was some malicious plan you concocted to hurt me, not after everything we've been through. I just think you're too young to know how to stop being selfish and I got caught in the crossfire. I think you're just a kid who hasn't totally realized how much what you say and do affects people. I think you've just got a lot of growing up to do still; maybe as time goes on you'll understand what I've been trying to tell you.

I'm not sorry for loving you, but I do wish I hadn't loved you so blindly. I wish I hadn't loved you to the point that I didn't realize how messed up the way you were treating me was until after the fact. I wish I didn't love you like I do, to the point where I'm still second guessing everything and wondering if I should've done what I did or if I need to take back what I said and try to fix this. My friends are right. This isn't on me to fix. It's not going to be fixed until you can own up to the role you played in all of this. The only thing worse than no reconciliation is cheap reconciliation; I don't want to go back to you until you realize you need to and actually want to treat me differently.

I would've gone to the ends of the earth to help you if you needed me to - hell, I still would - and it feels like you...just didn't care. You've said you love what an encouragement I am to you, but you couldn't be bothered to show me the same respect and care I've shown you. That is why I told you it feels like you've been using me as an ego boost - because I've been giving and giving of myself to you, and I barely get anything from you in return. That's an exhausting way to live.

I love you. I want the best for you. But after all these years, I'm finally realizing that sometimes I have to love myself more.

---

You're the last person I expected to do this to me. You once called me just to reassure me that you hadn't done this to me. You've known my scars from the beginning, and up until now, you've always taken such great care of me in terms of the way you treated me knowing about those scars and fears and insecurities. I can't help but wonder what changed and why it changed so suddenly. This went from being one of the friendships I felt most secure in despite the great distance between us to one of the biggest sources of pain and confusion in my life.

I guess the reason that the fact that you would do this was such a shock to me is because you're a Christian. I know, I know, Christians are broken people, too, but I've told you many times that you understood Christ-like love to a depth far beyond what I understood. You were always this sweet picture of Jesus in my life...until you weren't. And I'm left wondering where that guy went.

I've been holding on to this hope that there's something going on that I just don't know about. That you're dealing with something and just need some time to yourself. But I see you all over social media and it seems like you're having a ton of fun with everything you're doing. It seems like you're okay enough that you could, at the very least, text me and tell me why you've been ignoring me for almost three months.

I know that you know that what you're doing is hurting me. That makes this hurt me even worse. That you used to be one of my best friends and one of the people I trusted most and would still do something you know causes me pain is just mind-boggling. It makes me question if I ever knew you as well as I thought I did. The guy I believed you were wouldn't do this.

I'm hurt, and I'm angry. But I know that if you decide to come back and apologize and tell me what's been going on and why you so suddenly disappeared from my life, I'd forgive you. And that's not just because I'm a firm believer in second chances. It's because I love you. It's because I still hold on to the hope that the guy who is doing this to me isn't who you really are at heart. It's because I value the friendship we had and will always wish we could get back to that. It's because I always thought this was one of the few friendships in my life that was built to last, and I'm so, so freaking scared right now that I was wrong.

---

There are so many names I could call you right now, but what good would that do? It's been more than nine months since you asked me to call you back and then pretty much vanished into thin air (except you didn't, because thanks to social media, I know that you're alive and well), and I'm past the anger stage by now. I'm hurt, and still very confused, but I'm not angry. If this is really what you were willing to do to someone you said was your sister and your best friend, then you're not someone I want or can handle having in my life.

The first few months, I spent a lot of time beating myself up. I replayed the last months of our friendship over and over again in my head wondering what I did wrong, going back to the lies I've heard so many times before that if I just wasn't so (insert adjective here), you wouldn't have left. I thought I had to have done something wrong, because why else would my best friend in the world leave without a hint of explanation? I thought that if only I could figure out where things went wrong, then I could do something to fix it.

But then, after many discussions with my therapist this summer and my best friend (the one who I know actually isn't going to up and leave me), I came to this very freeing realization: this isn't my fault. I didn't do anything wrong here. For pretty much the first time in my life, I know I was a good friend to you. I supported you both at Campbell and afterwards. I was your biggest cheerleader. I was there to listen any time you needed me. I helped you with school stuff. I was a good friend to you. This time, it's not that I chased you away. You just got up and left. And that's on you. I'm not going to carry the burden of wanting or trying to fix this when I didn't break it to begin with.

On the one hand, it still blows my mind that you would do this. You told me that I was your sister and your best friend, that you'd never trusted a girl the way you trusted me, that you had dreams of us being in each other's wedding one day. You knew from the very beginning, literally from the very first day we hung out, that people abandoning with no explanation was my biggest fear, and you promised me that day that you would never do that to me. You promised me that if you were ever upset with me, you would come and talk to me about it. And for a while, you did. I was so amazed by it because you were the first person besides Matt who forgave me when I messed up and didn't automatically just ditch me. I never thought I had to worry about you doing this to me...until I did.

On the other hand, I'm kind of not surprised by this. Through the four years we were friends, I learned a lot about you. I watched the way you treated other people, especially when it came to relationships ending. I learned the situations you'd been through before I met you with people you called friends and how you'd responded to them. So looking back, it's not really all that shocking you would pull something like this. You're very good at running when things get hard. You pretty much always pick "flight" instead of "fight," no matter how worthy that something is of being fought for. You protect yourself from feeling anything remotely deep at all costs, no matter how that affects the people around you.

If this is really how little regard you have for me and my feelings after everything we went through together, then frankly, I'm not sorry you're gone. I was missing the person I thought you were instead of who you clearly are, and thanks to the love I have in my life, I realize that I am worth so much more than what you gave me.

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