I have as of today ended a friendship or at least I think it was I who ended it. Casi was my Best Friend for 6 years. I honestly thought that we would be friends for life. She and I could do nothing at all and still have a blast. Seasons changed and she filed for divorce from her husband. She started changing. She lost weight, she started dating guys that were “interesting” to say the least. She ended up living with the biggest dirt-bag for about 4 months. This after knowing him for less than 2 months. I was there for her when she tried to move him out the first time. I went to her house 40 miles away and helped her pack his stuff and drove it another 40 miles. I was there when she let him back in and through the other self destructive things she was going through. We had fights about him and she accused me of not wanting her to be happy and of jealousy. But when she finally kicked him out the last time I thought I had my friend back. I was wrong. Two weeks later she started dating yet another guy and less than a month after that he moved in. She started to not return my calls unless she needed to ask a favor. She said she was going to come over to take me out for my birthday and she didn’t show. She never called, text, emailed or anything. She said they were both in the hospital with pneumonia but it wasn’t convincing. I tried to tell her how hurt I was and that I felt that she was ignoring me cuz she was too busy with her new boyfriend. She again accused me of being miserable and jealous. She told me I wasn’t a priority to her. There it was on my computer screen. “No, you are not a priority to me”. “I have changed…I am not overweight, miserable or married anymore”. Well not to be outdone I sent an email just as “sweet” back. I am a career woman, with horses, a husband, a child, horses, continuing education. Yet I always made her a priority. I informed her that would no longer be the case.

Maybe I was jealous. But not of her or her new boyfriend. I was jealous of all the people who had that best friend to chat with when things went wrong or when they went so right. I think more than anything I tried so hard because she did change.

I wouldn’t let myself believe it then. Mostly because the new Casi was someone I didn’t really like. I never saw the old Casi as miserable or overweight. All I saw was my friend. Apparently she never really saw me at all. Thanks for listening.

The End

DECEMBER STORY OF THE MONTH

December - “Kim”

I wrote a summary of my ended friendship shortly after its demise. I was of half a mind to just copy and paste it again, but I need to determine for myself how it writes now, after the space of 2 years has passed. I want to find I’m more clinical now, I want to be triumphantly over it. Its ending broke my heart then. I want to demonstrate to myself how much stronger I am now. I need to tell it again, from the perspective of time, as though I need to test myself for the pain–how successful have I been at stemming the pain. I feel weary at the prospect of telling it again. I remember I used to long for friendship as a child. I had one best friend in grammar school. She moved away, to the next state over, at the end of the 7th grade. I was the straight-A student whom few kids had a tolerance for. She was unaffected by that, and we did well until she left, and then the physical distance greatly dampened, watered down, the relationship, but didn’t end it. I still had 2 sisters then, one, Glenda, was 10 years older than me, the other, Felicia, 9 years older than Glenda. I was the youngest. Glenda and I were close, as though the 10-year span were negligible, and we had a very good relationship. But of course she came to milestones well ahead of me, and so she moved out when I was 9. And so there comes a loneliness inherent in the age difference. Glenda would wind up dying–just going out and drowning–just after I turned15. She was 25. The loneliness intensified. We had had a childhood full of material things, coupled with an alcoholic, verbally, emotionally and physically abusive father, and a mother enough in denial that his behavior was never curbed.

There is an extreme loneliness borne of that. I never made another best friend through grammar school, or really any friends of any note. I finished grammar school 2 years early because I had been fortunate to have been promoted early twice, the thing that helped incur the wrath of the other kids in the first place. I went on through high school, through college, got married, had a child, but still, I longed for a close friend. I relegated my longing to something that just never was going to happen, when I became friends with a mom at my son’s school. We hit it off right away, had every commonality. And with it an ease about being around each other that spoke to my soul. Funny, in many ways it’s harder to write about now, than back then. The pain was so raw it demanded voice then, in chronological order no less. Now, it floods back in all at once, and calls me from one point I’m thinking of making, leading me to another. And another, until I don’t know which point I’d rather touch on first, or next. They all seem necessary to be related at once now. And none of them seem necessary, both at the same time. Because it’s futile now, and I more than know it. Back then–2 years?…”back then?”, it seems like such a long time ago–it’s only been 2 years–there was something in the retelling of it which just HAD to reunite us, I just knew it. I hold no such assertions now. I can’t help but know better by now. “Back then” sounds like another good and useful way of asserting that I know better now. She and I were inseparable, had everything in common. We even had similar names. She had also experienced the same kind of childhood as I had. She understood what it was like to be mistreated by one’s own parent. We connected on so many levels. We had a love for each other that was fun and also felt like a sisterhood of sorts. She understood my loss of Glenda, as much as she could, or so I thought. My remaining sister Felicia became ill, about 4 years into my friendship. A metastasis of breast cancer that had been in remission for 10 years. My friend tried to understand. I gained somewhat raveled, disjointed parts. Really nothing too unexpected, but maybe so to the inexperienced eye. It was grief. The grief for Felicia, who was showing beginning signs of decline; and renewed for Glenda, all those years before, stirred by this second impending loss. Glenda was 25 when she died. Felicia had made it to 58 by then. We had had a brother who died at the age of 4 to leukemia, 4 years before I was born. I didn’t want to be the only one left. I was sick of being surrounded by loss. As my sister’s decline began, so did the decline of my friendship. The friendship’s death was rapid, and decisive. My friend basically began to think I was doing things I really wasn’t–I did a bit of drowning of my sorrows in a few well-placed beers, she left and never looked back. It was hard, coming while my sister was beginning to die. It was bad, being at the same school where once we couldn’t wait to run into each other, where our kids stood confused as to why there were no more playdates.

One of her sons was developmentally disabled. I always loved being around him, around both her boys. They, especially he, typified the innocence of a life without presuppositions. She did say, after about the first week’s silence, in an email that she could “no longer be in a relationship with me”, and simply fell dead silent permanently. Never a why, never a chance at discussion. I was determined it could be resolved, since it seemed to have no tangible reason. The more I tried to initiate a discussion, the more entrenched she became. And yet, she walked around looking as devastated as me, and stood near me as much as she could to wait for her kids, when she could have stayed on the other end, well away. The sad look on her face was so painful to see, and so I tried to ask her once more to talk. She became more entrenched. My sister died–it’ll now be 2 years this month. I finally gave up. In the context of losing my sister, ironically I did meet another friend. I love this friend as much as I loved this former friend. I’m fortunate in that. I had vowed never to let another friendship become close again, not that I ever thought one would. But just in case, I needed to not let that happen. I’ll always miss my other friend as well, though. I try to be so much more careful in this friendship. I don’t want to do whatever happened to abruptly end the other one. I looked inward for the blame for so long. My flaws, my weaknesses. Me, period. Thank you for hearing my story.

The End