White Flag

Shattered Friendship Redux:

We failed.

Simple as that really. Despite all our efforts and the aid of close friends we who were once best friends and inseperable are now strangers in every way that matters.

She tells me we have "no connection anymore"and if she truly feels that way then I envy her. I wish I could just shrug my shoulders and disconnect like that. I really do. It's just not something I can do easily. I imagine that is why I get close to so few people because it's a very dangerous place for me to put myself.

I am still not sure why I did so with her. Other than we were both lonely, needed someone, and we could feel that in the other one. We also both had a similar life situation and that created a comfort zone and understanding.

She tells me I like to play the "noble friend" and she "isn't dependent on me anymore." She says it like I'm her father or older brother and she needs to escape me to "grow up". Except I wasn't playing the noble friend at all... I needed her as much as she needed me. In a year when my grandmother and the cat I adored both died, and my brother who I was close to was away in Canada our time together was very important in my staying sane.

Long, long ago that must have been where things started to go wrong. When in her efforts to stop leaning on me I suddenly found myself with my own support gone and stumbled around in an effort to stay upright. What was a bid for independence and strength by one of us was a hurtful and unexplained distancing for the other. The natural reaction was of course repaying that distance in equal measure which seemed just as unexplained to the one who'd started the process. And it built... and built... a thousand disagreements... all of them petty and small. None of them mattering at all. But the emotions behind them did.

And here we are. Things have been said that cannot be unsaid. Any sense of being comfortable with her is gone and... I really don't think it can return this time. It was just too easy for her to give up. And then she took what she must have thought was her most hurtful arrow in her quiver and used it on me. It didn't work as well as she thought... but she used it. She thought it would hurt and dig deep and she used it... and the attempt is all that matters.

She was right. It did hurt. Not the words but what she wanted them to accomplish.

There was a time when the intensity of our fights was strangely reassuring, because at least it meant we deeply cared for the other. But now all of that has burned away from us and there isn't anything but a calm coldness.

That's how I know we're done. That's how this is different than every other time.

And yet I'll miss her anyway. I'll miss never being alone. I'll miss logging on early and staying up to the very last moment and often times far beyond just to be with her. I'll miss the long intimate talks. I'll miss the humorous moments, the sense of closeness and comfort, the sense that someone cared who wasn't forced to because of shared blood.

I'll even miss her pessimism because I am far too optimistic than I should be and enjoy wearing my rose colored glasses far, far too much.

It was a good two years and I can't say I regret them. I hope when the opportunity to be so close with someone comes again I'll still be willing to do so. I don't know if it will because I somehow went through my entire life without having done so before. But I'm different than I was when I met her for better and worse.

Anything is possible and a new page turns... another chapter starts.