Disappointed

I no longer have a romanticized conception of lifelong best friends – I know it’s a myth.  I now believe that friendships are sort of like relationships.  Some turn into life-giving bonds of mutual love and support, while others deteriorate into unhealthiness and toxicity.   And when a friendship ends – unexpectedly, predictably, gradually, or suddenly; through a message on a social networking site, phone call, or actual fight; with words that reverberate long after they’ve been said or deafening silence – it sucks.

Yes.  No other fancy word for it.

It just plain sucks.

I had someone distance herself from me a while ago, and when I mustered enough nerve to ask if there was anything wrong, I was given a litany of excuses that I didn’t even want to question out of its sheer meaninglessness.  I mean, we are friends.  She just wouldn’t wake up one day determined to treat me as if I don’t exist after years of friendship, right?

We didn’t have an argument.  I didn’t run away with her husband, or ran her dog over.  But if she felt that I did anything wrong, I can trust that she’ll be enough of a friend to actually tell me so we can move on from it, right?

Right?

I gave her the benefit of the doubt because maybe it truly is busyness that’s preventing her from responding to my text messages.  Sadly, I don’t believe that’s the case anymore.  Maybe it’s just me, but if someone has enough time to readjust her Facebook privacy settings to block me from seeing her #throwbackthursday posts, then she would have time to reply to a text message.  Even if it’s just an emoticon.  Or a measly “k.”

And this is why I am sad.

I feel that she kind of lied to me.  When she first told me there was nothing wrong, I blindly believed her.  Why wouldn’t I?  This is a person I’ve known since I was a college freshman, and is a godmother to my child.  If she told me aliens made crop circles in her backyard, I will make us tinfoil hats to protect us from their mind-controlling abilities.  Maybe the circumstances that have drawn us together just changed so I really shouldn’t take anything personally.  But how can I not when messages are unanswered, and invitations are declined from my side, and not sent at all from hers? 

There’s this practical side of me that is now questioning my intelligence and is asking myself why I can’t get it through my thick head that this “friend” is giving me the boot.  But there is also this part of me that believes people are inherently good, so I refuse to believe that she’d do that to me, especially since I’ve done nothing wrong.  I guess I didn’t want to entertain the possibility that this person that I trusted could intentionally hurt me this way.  To be kind of “dumped” by someone who’s seen me at my most vulnerable, it’s a little heartbreaking.  To want to ask her for an explanation is quite humiliating, and to feel the need to apologize for something I might have done that I have no clue of is a little bit degrading. 

I don’t want to dwell on this strange feeling, but I find myself constantly trying to figure out what went wrong because one moment we were like family, the next we might as well have been strangers.  I was left with the feeling that I never knew her at all.  And maybe I never have.  Who knows … for now, I have to constantly remind myself that things aren’t what they were before, and that while it is kind of my loss that I no longer have a friend in her, it’s more of a loss on her side because I am pretty awesome.   And if she didn’t know that, then maybe she wasn’t a friend to begin with.  So it’s really not a loss to me.  Right?