I'm sure this won't be interesting to anyone, it's actually really personal but I have needed to talk about this for a long time but can't seem to find the right person to talk to about it. So I guess my blog will have to do.
I guess you could say I've always been the type of person that clings to people. I'm not quick to make friends but if I find someone that I want to be friends with, I tend to just cling... there's no other word that I can think of right now. Anyway one of those people was my best friend in high school. I met him in my Sophomore year while watching Spartacus in World Civ. I instantly knew I needed to know him. We were both sort of off-beat and in our own worlds.
We became friends and of course, like any teenage girl, I fell in love with him... or at least what I thought was love at that time. I never told him that I liked him that way, I cared too much about our friendship to ruin it... or to be honest, I didn't want to be rejected. We were really good friends all through our high school years, in fact most of my memories of high school involved him in some way. Whether it was chasing each other down the hall during lunch having a water bottle fight or yelling "kiss her!" out the second story windows to the awkward couples passing by below, we had so much fun! Of course all the while I was pining away for him because all teenage girls want someone that they can't have or don't dare try for. I was raving mad when he didn't show up at yearbook signing day because I really wanted him to sign my yearbook. I was so irritated that I took it to his house and made him sign it, which most people would've thought was crazy but he actually was glad I did and asked me to sign his.
Most of this is not really important, maybe I just want to remind myself that our friendship wasn't just a figment of my imagination. So many times I thought maybe he cared about me like I did for him but I always talked myself down off my cloud. We went to a dance together and it was the funnest dance I went to all of high school. He even eluded to the fact that he wanted to tell me something but didn't know how to... that killed me for weeks! After high school I saw him a few times, but not much. He took off on an LDS mission to the Bahia Blanca Argentina... I had a lot of friends that left on missions all over the world but his is the only one I still remember. I wrote him a few times. Some of the letters I wrote never got sent... I just needed to write them but knew I didn't dare let him read them so I kept them. When he got back from his mission I don't really know what I expected. Of course I was hoping that maybe he'd come home and realize how much I meant to him and we'd live happily ever after... but something quite different happened.
We started hanging out again, even more than in high school. I remembered why I was such a big fan of his and why I missed him so much. Then I started to notice that he wasn't perfect! Maybe it was the "teenage goggles" coming off for the first time but he wasn't the dreamboat I had been pining over, he was just a guy. Just a friend. I no longer wanted him to want me, in fact I didn't want him like that at all anymore. I just wanted to be his friend. We went to movies and concerts and talked about people we were dating and I was so happy to just be his friend without the heart wrenching torment I had in high school. It was comfortable and I was content.
One day he came over and we had a really long talk. He told me that he had been struggling for a while and feeling like he was unimportant and no one cared about him. I don't have a very good memory but this one memory has stuck with me like glue. We stood on the driveway of my brother's house where I was living and I finally said what I'd wanted to for all those years. It went something like this... "Look, I have to tell you something and you might think it's wierd but I have to say it... I love you. Not in a romantic way, maybe it used to be but right now, I just need you to know that I love you as a friend and if you really think no one cares about you, you're wrong. I worry about you and I care about you and you're not alone." I don't know that I even realized it until that moment that I really did love him with that friendship kind of love. That teenager inside of me was relieved and I felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I had said those three words that had plagued me for years. Like I said, I don't have a good memory but as clear as anything, I can still see the look on his face from when I said that... It was confusion, appreciation and relief almost. We never talked about that night again, nor did those words come up again but I needed to say them.
Perhaps I wasted too much time with all of that but I don't think anyone could really understand the part that this all comes to without that back story. I've dated a lot of guys... some worthwhile and most not. I've broken hearts and been hurt as well. But no one has ever broken my heart like this friend did. One day my friend and I were talking and he said he was moving to Arizona for the summer, that he just needed to get away for a while. He even asked me if I wanted to come with him and we could be roommates. As much as I would've liked to, I had a job and other commitments here. I told him we needed to hang out before he left and he said he'd be back in a month for a week and we could hang out then. He even called me while he was on the road driving to Arizona for the first time. That was the last time I talked to him.
I tried to call him but got a message saying the number had been disconnected. I tried to text him with no response. He doesn't have an email address or facebook or myspace, etc. I kept trying just in case I was confused. After a couple months I called his old work, his father's company, and asked if they had any contact information for him. They didn't. I checked with some of our other friends from high school and no one had heard from him or knew how to get a hold of him. I knew something was wrong when he didn't go to one of his best friends from high school's wedding. I found his sister-in-law who I had met a few times and asked her over facebook what was going on. She said he was still in Arizona and has pretty much chosen to cut everyone out of his life. He still contacted his brother from time to time to let him know he was ok but that was it. She said he just needed time to sort things out.
As the months went by, I kept hoping he'd call or something... how could he just not want to talk to me ever again? I knew that he didn't just do this to me but I felt like it was personal. He was leaving me forever and I didn't know how to handle it. I started having dreams from time to time. I tend to dream a lot but not about the same things. I dreampt that I ran into him a party and I ran and cried cause I was so upset with him. He came to comfort me and told me that he wished I would've come with him because he loved me. I dreampt that I smacked him across the face when I saw him and told him how much of a coward he was and how much he hurt me. Sometimes they are happy and sometimes they are sad but when I wake up it's all the same... I just feel a loss, a sense of emptiness. I've thought so many times about what I'd say or do if I ever saw him again. It's been 3 years since I've talked to him or seen him and I still can't shake him. Since that time I've gotten married and I'm almost done with my Bachelor's degree. Life goes on but he still has this hold on me that I can't let go of. He was my best friend, something I don't find everyday.
The last I heard from his sister, he's moved back to Utah and is in school at the U but still doesn't really want to contact anyone. I don't know what hurts more... the fact he left with the goal to cut off everyone he knew, or the fact that he's back and hasn't wanted to get back in touch. Basically what this all boils down to is this... I love this person, I miss this person, I'm hurt by this person... and I can't seem to let go.
Sorry to hear about this. Let me ask you this: are you mad at him for treating you (and everyone else) this way? Or are you mad at yourself for continually being drawn to this person?
ReplyDeleteGood Question... both. I'm hurt from what he did but I hate that I can't seem to let it go. I'm not sure what kind of hold this guy has on me but I can't seem to move on. My husband has mentioned a concern that if he ever came back around I'd run away with him but I assure him it's nothing romantic. I guess good friends are hard to come by and when you find one, it's hard to not hold on after they're gone. It's funny because even as a say "good friend" I don't see him that way after what he's done but my memory of the good times in the past still haunts me.
ReplyDeleteFriendship is a hard and tricky thing, mainly because it feels so permanent and changes our lives. Aristotle talks about this as well. He talks about three types of friendship, and it sounds like you're describing "completed friendship."
ReplyDeleteShould we give up the friendship? Should one still love the friend? On the one hand, the reason we love friends is because they are good. Should we then break off the friendship?
Aristotle says that if that person's vice can be cured, we should continue to love the friend and straighten out the friend. However, there's nothing strange about breaking off the friendship. If the friend cannot be cured, one withdraws from him/her.
Should you treat this other person as if you were never friends in the first place? No. Rather, one should still see the friend with some sort of affection because that is the decent thing to do. One should be mindful of the intimacy between the friendship that once was. There should be some consideration for that former friendship. One should remember of the intimacy of that previous friendship. Don't consider that friend as now a stranger.
Without going into the details of your friend, he may still be in the mindset of starting over–which includes cutting out loved ones. In the end, having the memories of previous friends is a good thing, even if one is no longer friends with that person.
I should also add what else Aristotle has said, particularly about why and how friendships dissolve.
ReplyDeleteHow else do friendships dissolve? One is through long absences. It's kind of like a forgetfulness. Absence, then, does not make the heart grow fonder. Aristotle seems to hold on to an out of sight, out of mind mentality when it comes to friendship, which is why Aristotle brings up the saying "lack of communication breaks up the friendship."
So with complete friendship, it isn't just some sort of affection, but some active condition. Now, active conditions are like habits. It's something you have to work towards, much like courage or temperance. Thus, we have to work on our friends. Friendship isn't like graduation where you get your degree and then your school work is complete. Friendship is more like a garden: you have to constantly work at it or else you lose your garden. It's because in complete friendships, there is something there that isn't in other types of friendships: choice. You choose this friend as someone you see to establish a completed relationship. The other friends are friends by accidental reasons. You care for that person not just as a feeling but through some active condition; it's a habit. We must do friendship rather than be part of a friendship.
Our best friend is what we wish for ourselves: life, happiness, and fulfillment of desires, health. They are like a loving couple who feel the same way about each other. The friend is like a second self. It's one soul in two bodies.