The Bittersweet Girl

“I don’t want to be your friend anymore.”

My stomach lurched up and knocked into my heart, starting a bruise as my brain zoomed in circles around our conversation. What did I do?

“I’ve come to a decision,” my best friend of four years told me. Happiness that she'd found direction blended with the selfish release of breath. The release that came only when I realized this could bring an end to my sleep loss from talking her through her own split emotion/person insomnia. Mostly, however, I was relieved for her. I’d hoped her decision would lead her away from all the at home hurt she’d toiled through.

“What did you decide?” I asked, fingers crossed that my happy friend was returning from her depressed, yearlong wreck of a self. I was nearly correct.

That’s when she blindsided me with those eight cruel words: I don’t want to be your friend anymore.

After I recovered from the startling punch, despite the lump clogging my throat and the tears beginning to sting and blur my vision, I asked, “What do you mean?”

“Recently I’ve decided to leave all my friends. Being by myself is the only way I can feel better."

I was done with texting her at that point.

The whole act was cold, heartless! Hands trembling, heart bursting and sobs shaking, I called her. Her answering voice was tired and flat, free of any standard shared pain. Emotionless. I begged her to let me know she was all right. In my distress, I promised to give her space and always be there for her if she truly needed to be alone.

But she didn’t.

She’s still friends with our friends. I’m still friends with our friends. I still feel like her friend. She’s just not my friend now.

No one except for the two of us even knows that anything bad happened.

I still feel her lay blows to my yellow black bruises, the sign of an incompletely healed heart, as I pass warily by her in the halls every day, ducking my face, hiding.

But she gets to laugh -it's wholeheartedly- at her conversation with the friend I don’t get to see anymore, the friend who unknowingly took her side. She doesn’t see me anymore either, likely by choice. My own best friend.

Then I feel deathly alone.

I’m still not over this feeling, and I hesitate to make new friends. Although I’m often lonely, I've stopped minding. My head is clearer after her. Her erratic behavior made me more cautious when picking my companions, for I don't want another reason to experience how she makes me burn out fresh blooded anger in that cursed hall. I detest the way the anger feels, and I despise the way she can monopolize my pain. However, these feelings brought better control over my idividual emotions. They no longer preoccupy me for more than a minute or two at most. I actually came to this decision myself:

If I can help it, I’ll never let myself be deceived into thinking an impassive is a friend again. Her cruelty gave me a torturous wisdom that surpasses the wish that I could put my personal injuries away forever. I won’t even let myself seek revenge when I wish she felt the same as I did. In fact, I could announce that message at any second to anyone who dares be unkind to me in the future.

For that life lesson, I can never repay her. I can never morally acheive payback.

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