Getting things out of my system

The only person who ever reads this is Courtney, and as Courtney is a good friend, I feel completely safe posting this.

I am awful at friendships.

The one thing I wanted ever since I was a little girl was a best friend. I used to pray every night for one. But every time I’ve considered someone to be my best friend, it’s derailed- badly.

Case in point:

Anna: Moved away.

Samantha: didn’t want to be my friend because I wasn’t a tomboy and I cried too much. I remember one time I was upset and crying (again) and Samantha turned to her mother, pointed at me, and said “See? This is why I can’t be friends with her anymore!”

Katie: Used me to get to a boy. When she realized that not only did he not like her, but that we were friends, she turned on me.

Melissa: Moved away. (This time to Singapore.)

Heather: When she had to chose between me or the popular girls, she chose them.

Bethany: We both have strong personalities and we butted heads a lot. There’s a lot that goes into that one, but I don’t feel like getting into it.

So you see, I’m awful at this. But there’s not even a common thread so I can look at it and go “Oh, now I see what I need to fix.” It’s really frustrating. Because now we come down to BFF #7.

In the past year and a half my beloved best friend turned into a stranger that I don’t even like. I’ve spent so much time and energy and emotion trying to keep her in my life, and it all came down to an personal ultimatum: either I tell her that I need out, or I continue my downward spiral.

I chose to tell her.

I told her everything. I held nothing back. I blurted out every painful truth that I had bottled up inside. And I know I hurt her, but do you know what? This was the first time that what I said or what I did made a difference. Because all this time, no matter what happened I don’t think she ever thought she might lose me. And she did. She lost me.

But the awful thing is, I lost her too.

Once again, a relationship I held near and dear to my heart has ended. At least, how I knew it. The friendship we used to have can never come back. We can never go back to the way things used to be. But maybe things will change and growing and maturing will occur and we can build an entirely new friendship. That’s what I still pray for.

But in the meantime…

“And I know, even a few of you smart guys are like, ‘Everyone’s equal, everyone’s opinion is equal; everyone matters.’ No. Everyone is equal, until the point they decide to open up and show the world how stupid and ignorant they actually are.”

She posted that on her Facebook wall. I think it’s in context of me.

I am not stupid. I am not ignorant.

I am tired. I am hurt. I am exhausted.

There is quite a difference.

These are the mistakes I made:

I believed that she was perfect. I believed our friendship was better than anyone else’s, and that no matter what, we would always be perfect best friends without even trying.

I believed nothing would ever change. I believed that the girl that I knew in high school would live forever. When the high school girl changed and morphed, I chose not to believe it.

I believed I could change her back. I believed that if I prayed hard enough and tried hard enough, she would magically transform into my best friend again. But it has slowly dawned on me that I can’t change her. It’s not my decision, it’s hers.

There is only one thing I regret.

And that is that because of this situation, I’ve lost another friend. She won’t speak to me anymore. She’s dropped me from friend lists. There’s no way of knowing for sure if this is the reason, but it’s the only one I’ve got.

This is hard.

I’ve stopped praying for a best friend. Clearly, I’m not meant to have one.

But I won’t stop praying that someday this will all be a dim bad memory and I will have her as a friend again.