Feeling: free
Listening to: Belle and Sebastian - Turn, Turn, Turn
Reading/Watching: homework. sigh.

I've lost friends in many ways.

You could say I've become an expert at it, although it's a skill that inspires me with childish terror. For all the times and troubles, all the variations on the standard theme, I still never get inured to it. I was always so cautious, so desperate to hold on to people, even when it was clear they weren't going anywhere.

Part of me still remembers what it felt like to have pretty much everyone I valued in the world decide I was ugly and annoying, and just plain turn their backs on me. Part of me remembers building a shell around myself, where I pretended I needed nothing and no one, and wrote dozens of novels about pretty, popular girls with plenty of friends and cute boyfriends and the kind of life I "didn't want, anyway."

I've lost friends to time, and distance. I've lost friends to other friends. I've lost friends to boys, and suicide, and college. I've lost friends who said they had feelings of revulsion for me, and I've lost friends who said they loved me and I was priceless while they were secretly screwing someone else behind my back.

I've never let go of them easily. Even the ones that hurt me, I clung to memories and cried for what I was losing, even if it didn't exist anymore, even if it never had. I don't like to give up on people. It's what makes it so easy for people to use me, because all they have to do is apologize and all is forgiven.

But. I've cried my tears for Bri. Months ago, I cried them. I sat alone, and cried, and thought of a million possibilities, a million different ways I could win back her trust, things I could do or say or hide in order to make things be the way they were, and somehow erase what had happened so we could go back to being two halves of a whole.

Thing was, away from her, I ceased being a half. I realized I was capable of being more than a half. My pride prevented me from taking any of those desperate measures, and instead I mourned alone.

Our resumed friendship was even worse than when we were apart, because even though her lips said "I'm sorry" and "forgive me," her eyes stayed cold, and her veiled comments said "beg me to forgive you." Her words would lie in the ditch between insult and teasing, and she would wait with such a bland expression, to see whether I flinched.

By the time she realized I would never be the docile, supportive sidekick that I'd always been content to be (and by the time I realized that's what I'd been, and not the equal partner I'd always imagined), I was already planning a way to pull away without causing either of us pain. Seeing her felt like obligation, not friendship. Like a painful muscle that had to be pulled over and over before it could loosen.

Then one day she cut the cord for both of us. I'm sure she's waiting for me to come back, asking for explanations, or apologizing, or mourning as I did before.

But it's funny. I'm waiting for the same thing.

So, to the girl I've known since the first day of college: I have hugged you, and laughed with you, and cried with you, and cried for you, and cried because of you, and been encouraging every step of the way, and told you the truth when you needed it, and loving lies when you couldn't handle it, and stood through your storms and tantrums and always been the one who was there, always, always, always there, through everything.

I have been called a bitch, a slut, a backstabber, an immature child, a naive idiot, all by you. I have called 911 and held your hand in an ambulance when you thought 20 vicodin was better than living, I have told you "rest, I'll walk through the rain to get dinner," I have let you rage and take your temper out on me (but only when you're PMSing or the traffic is bad or a boy was less than perfect or your parents are making you crazy or your legs hurt or you're having a bad hair day or someone looked at you wrong or it's a day ending in Y), I have visited you in hospitals and brought you flowers, I have heard your tearful voice on the phone and been at your side in five minutes flat, I have held your hair back and rubbed your shoulders when you were drunk over a toilet bowl, I have comforted you and sung you lullabies, I have opened my door to you at any hour of the night, I have opened my heart and given my patience and support and humor and love and now, you are telling me to leave.

For the first time in my entire life, I am glad to go.

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