Dear Ash,
You won’t remember, but when we were 14, I wrote on my stupid old blog about my ‘abandonment issues’ – which weren’t serious, though you helped me to realise that they mattered. Even if I’m very glad that you called me out on my bullshit, which caused me to write that excuse for a post, part of me wishes I’d never done it.
You see, if I’d have been honest with you from the start, none of this would have happened. I wouldn’t have tried so desperately to be friends, constantly replying to messages and getting paranoid even before the days where you called me a close friend, letting you trust me, trusting you in return: because if little 14-year-old me had held back, I would never have fallen in love with you. Is that a good thing? I don’t think so.
Not that I realised I was necessarily lying. In the early days, it was just a way to let myself realise that people didn’t all think I was stupid, that you – someone who was kind, out of my social circle – respected me. And so it continued, like the time I somehow got your number by lying. Do you have any idea how awful I felt about myself? No. You don’t.
2 years on, and I’ve figured out that I don’t care any more. You no longer have the power to make my mind spin in a circle with panic, to cause me to question what kind of person I am. It’s not you that does that any more; rather, it’s everything that happened after you. You were the root cause, the person who made me change and see that I was acting terribly.
I’ll be honest with you, despite the fact that you’ll never read this. It’s time to truly admit to myself that this shit wasn’t my fault, but that I don’t blame you either. So, here we go; I’ll delve into a year of hurt and love and all that shit.
I wanted to be to you what you were to me. I think it was as simple as that. I craved the friendship, the happiness I felt when you trusted me: that simple trust, from someone I had a deep-rooted respect for, was so foreign. Before I start howling at myself, I’ll explain what you did.
Yes, you had things going on at the time, with your girlfriend, your mental health, and people bullying you. But it didn’t give you the right to completely blank my existence, for a month, and then come back and tell me that I’ve been such a good friend to you. I KNEW I had. “No!” my mind screams, “He needed space, and you can’t blame him; you did all he asked and that was to be there for him.” Yeah, that’s true; I never doubted that you felt terrible for your actions because I know you did. It ate at you, ripping away at who you were.
That argument. God, it was stupid; if we’d both talked it out, it could have been resolved. I still blame myself in the corner of my mind, because I never gave you privacy. Here we go with the honesty thing again: I told my friends what we talked about because I fancied the shit out of you. I was soaring on the feeling of love, happiness, and excitement at something new.
The point is, I never thought straight. I’m making excuses, I know, and it’s pointless anyway because it’s all in the past. Every conversation we had, I stored in my head, and if that’s not possessive and weird I don’t know WHAT is.
Remember when Holly made me upset when she talked about suicide and we called from your friends to come and talk to me, help me? I still feel cold when I think how… Awkward that was. I needed you at the time, yet you said for me to not do that again because you weren’t good with sudden real life things. I understood that, still do, but it hurt like the chill of regret.
So many things hurt, actually; it’s all coming back now. Your lovely words, when you said I’d always been there for you when you apologised after our massive argument. I had, but I wish it had only been as friends because THEN, I could have been honest and not let my feelings get in the way. Those arguments, when I was so awful to your ex-girlfriend and you said it had made things worse, but you didn’t blame me. Thank you.
I’m doing it again, see? Exposing your privacy. Telling the internet what you said, what you did, still trying to make myself feel better. Who cares if you’ll never read it? It’s still not fair, and it’s just drudging up old memories and pain.
Honestly, it makes me cringe how I acted before, after we stopped talking utterly in June last year. No goodbye, no anything, only scraps of “Why should I talk to her?” from Holly, and the pain in my mind from countless hours of telling myself I had fucked everything up. I’m presuming that you had so much going on at the time that I was the last thing on your mind, which I respect.
You had no idea how much a simple thing affected me. How, every time I showed it to my friends, I felt sick with myself and pathetic that someone could rule my thoughts. It was toxic, poisonous, crawling underneath my skin through the scratches I left.
Now, when I look back, I wish you hadn’t consumed so much of my thoughts and my time. It’s pathetic really, though both my friends and me tell me it’s not: you were a large part of my life, and so it was only natural – right? For a long time after all of it, your name made me flinch and hate myself just that little bit more. It’s overdramatic I know, but I think only I understood the mind-numbing pain I experienced when you never replied to me. Burning, sinking with all the certainty that you were no longer my friend.
I felt needy, clingy, all the things you described me to be before. I shut everything out sometimes, not letting myself feel the pure hatred I felt for myself, and when I heard your name it was like a slap to the face as my heart split open. All the fights I heard about, the stuff you did at parties, and the ever-present knowledge that you smoked weed: something I thought that you would never do, for reasons nobody but a few people understand. Not that it matters; you most likely think I’ve told everyone, when that’s the furthest from the truth.
I’m not sorry, which surprises me. I feel horribly guilty for how I acted, but I was in love and it wasn’t my fault. You were the first person that truly inspired me to want to help people, support people, which made me into who I am today. People won’t get why I still have to thank you, why I still would care if you got hurt.
Through you, I became friends with the person who hated you, who is now one of my closest friends. That’s probably ironic, so maybe that’s why I’m laughing? My friends at the time are closer to me now, and I’ve made so many new ones too.
We’re talking again, and you act as if you care. THOUGH I’m terrified that I will, I’m trying not to fall into the same trap of trusting you, getting drawn in. I’m not stupid enough this time. So many things have changed about me, like you wouldn’t believe, but I don’t want you to know. My heart doesn’t skip when I see your name and I don’t WAIT for you to reply, because if you don’t, that’s fine.
It makes it easier that you aren’t coming back to our school next year. I don’t have to hear your voice, or your name in class, and the only contact I’ll have with you is the Internet – oh shit, that’s how it was in our friendship. That’s messed up and isn’t how things should be; I’ve learnt that now.
I don’t love you, and haven’t for over a year. It makes me happy to know that, because I can admit that moving on was because of my strength of character. In some corner of my mind, I suppose I hate you, but it’s a muted roar and is nothing important. It’s impractical and immature, far overshadowed by the things that happened after.
All in all? You aren’t why I do things any more. You don’t keep me sane, happy; I’m not the great friend to you I once was, and you don’t trust me on a whole different level. Good.
If I’d have been more honest, less willing to share what we spoke about, and if I didn’t care so much – I wouldn’t have been so hurt, and maybe things for both of us would have ended up differently. But I’m glad they didn’t, as because of you, I grew up, realised how horrible I could be (yes, I’m quoting you) and learned to live with childish guilt.
Have a nice life in college. Maybe one day, we’ll be friends, and we’ll see sides to each other that will remind us of days gone by. Maybe we’ll trust each other, talk about who we’ve fallen in love with, and ask each other how we’ve REALLY been. Until then, I’m very much done with you. For a while, I’ve been STRONG enough to be done with you.
I’m not angry. I’m not sad, not longing for the past, and not crying over how you made me feel. I’m living my life, and if you ever find out about this blog or that I’ve written this, you’ll laugh so hard that you’ll be sick because I’m being too dramatic and sentimental. I don’t care.
From Elm π