The last crack.

This post has been brewing in the back of my mind since I re-started this blog. Something I have wanted to talk about so badly, yet haven't wanted to talk about at all. I know that makes no sense. I suppose the reason for that is that I should probably talking about it with the person who it directly concerns. Only we're not speaking. And I don't know if I want to change that. I waffled about this post. Decided I was going to post it, decided I wouldn’t, and then back again. Asked for advice, rejected the advice, reconsidered the advice.

Ultimately, it comes down to this. Some people move on and some of us ride the drama llama until it falls over dead. And while I wish I could really just move the fuck on, I am really more the second type. And so it goes.

Also, this belongs in my Thirty Days of Truth, but I don't know if I should label it "something I need to forgive myself for" or "something I need to forgive someone else for." So I'm using it as both. Because I do what I want.


This story begins with an ending. In mid-2010, I allowed a thirteen year friendship to dissolve into nothing. How this came to be is ... complicated to explain, but was so simple to do.

One day, she was married. The next, she was separated. One day, we were friends. The next, we weren't. Just like that.

Well, no, not like that.

It happened like this. I was sitting in my room at my mother's house, minding my own business, when I received a text from a number I didn't recognize. I pretty much never respond to numbers I don't recognize, because if I don't have your number, there is usually a good reason for it. But due to certain similarities between that number and my friend's, I asked her if she happened to know who the number belonged to. She did. It was her husband.

"Um. What?" You see, for the duration of their rather lengthy relationship, if he had something to say to me, he would generally relay the message through her. Or hit me up on Myspace, back when people still used Myspace.

 

She said he needed to talk with me, so I responded to his text and he asked if he could come over and talk to me face-to-face. I okayed that, because I was both worried and incredibly curious as to what he could possibly need to speak with me about.

 

And then he comes over and tells me that they are getting a divorce. That she is leaving him. I was both shocked and not at the same time. I had really thought that they would last, but I always knew that if they were to split, she would have to be the one to leave. He’s the kind to suffer in silence for eternity. Plus, he was comfortable, if nothing else. But that’s just my perspective.

 

And he came to me because he felt that I was the only person around that he was really “friends” with, that he could talk to about this. We were once very close. Ups and downs and their relationship had contributed to our drifting apart, but we had always remained friends. Somewhat. And she had given him her blessing about coming to me and she had given him my phone number.

 

Before he left, he informed me that her one request was that I not talk to her about the divorce. And so, I didn’t.

 

After that, she texted me to thank me for being there for him. And then I pretty much never spoke to her again.

 

Close on the tails of this episode, I got kicked out of my mother’s house. Er. Ok, so “kicked out” isn’t really correct. She and I got into an explosive argument and I left. Without my cellphone or shoes or pretty much anything but the clothes on my back and my car keys. I wandered aimlessly for about twelve hours before showing up at my friend’s husband’s door. Why him? Basically because he was pretty much the only person I knew who had a couch I could crash on and I knew he’d let me. Plus, again, I had no cell phone or way of contacting anyone else. And I damned sure wasn’t going back to my mother’s house, and haven’t lived there since, even though we are on speaking terms again.

 

After that night, I crashed there a few more times during my transient phase. Mostly those times were unintentional. We would hang out, I would pass out, he wouldn’t wake me.

 

He was always honest with her about it. I think she thought we were sleeping together. We never were. I have never slept anywhere but on the sofa. (At least not until we moved my bed into the spare room so Jailbait would have a place to sleep when he stays with his brother.)

 

Eventually, it all evolved into this really passive-aggressively hostile situation, and I just never did anything to stop it.

 

Maybe I was waiting for her to say something. More likely, I was just too caught up in my own bullshit to really notice or care about anything else. I’m not even trying to defend myself here. But everything works two ways. She never piped up and said, “hey, I have a problem” and I never bothered to confront her about her passive-aggressive behavior.

 

But really, really, there was a whole lot of past crap that eventually built up and just led to me (or maybe both of us) feeling like it was more effort than it was worth to be adults and talk it out. Someone once said, “friendship is like glass; once broken, it can be fixed, but there will always be cracks.” Simply put, we’d just ended up with one too many cracks. But things are not always as simple as they seem. Maybe after thirteen years, we just needed a fucking break. I don’t know.

 

And here’s the biggest truth in this whole situation:

When you left him, I was disappointed in you. In that moment, you were fallible, human. You admitted that you had made a mistake by marrying him or you were making a mistake by leaving him. In any case, you were no longer as perfect as I had once considered you. Because, let’s face it, in the relationship arena, I had always put you on a pedestal, because you could do it and I couldn’t. You could do monogamy and look down on me from your high horse and judge me for all the mistakes that I made with all the boys who ever mattered or didn’t matter or just drifted in and out. And I was angry with you. Angry in irrational ways that didn’t make sense, and sometimes, I’m still angry. Because you were supposed to be better than me and then, magically, one day, we were exactly the same. And I didn’t know you anymore.

 

Maybe that hurt the most. I had felt you slipping away in maybe a way similar to the way you slipped away from him, and then suddenly, you were gone and I did not know you at all. And you didn’t want to talk to me, because you “already had someone to talk to.” And I never spoke up and you never spoke up. And that was it. The end.

There are specific things I should forgive her for and forgive myself for, but mostly I guess I just need to forgive us both for not caring anymore. I just don’t know if I can.

 

Moving on is simple; it’s what you leave behind that makes it so difficult. - Unknown