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Monday, August 17, 2009

a friendship lost

this has been on my mind a lot lately since i had a couple of conversations about it last weekend. hopefully after i put this story to rest in my blog i'll be able to start getting over it.
i once had a very, very close male friend who shall remain nameless. if you've known me for a long time, you know who i'm talking about. anyway, my friendship with this person was unlike any other relationship i had ever had. we met the summer of 2001 and we connected on levels that i had never connected on with anyone else. at the time, it was probably my first friendship with a guy that was truly just a friendship. you know, without one of the other people feeling something deeper than just friends. shortly after we met he moved a couple hours away for school and we managed to forge a close relationship despite the distance. he eventually moved back to austin after a couple of years and we started hanging out a lot.
we used to spend all kinds of time together...movies, concerts, dinner, just sitting around watching crap on tv, and driving around. we goofed around a lot and also talked about serious things. at the time, i felt like he knew me better than just about anyone in the world. we maintained that level of friendship for years, despite a few obstacles that popped up. then, something happened.
sometime in 2007 we began to drift apart. i've had friendships fall apart for no reason before but not like this. we went many months without seeing or even speaking to each other. at the time i chalked it up to both of us being busy with our lives. after all, it wasn't the first time i experienced a lapse in friendship with someone. things come up and days turn into weeks which turn into months but that doesn't mean that people don't still care about each other. after i realized how long it had been since we had spoken i tried to reach out to him a couple of times. once i called and got the recording from at&t that the phone had been shut off. i tried again a couple of months later and got him on the phone. it was not the reunion conversation i had been hoping for.
over the last year and a half i've run into him a handful of times and the reception has been icy at best. the first couple of times this happened i was genuinely sad. here was someone who once knew me better than most people, who comforted me when i was upset, who entertained me when i was bored and now he acts like it's a chore to say hello to me. the next few times these encounters occurred i was not sad but angry. who did he think he was?! i still haven't figured that out but i do know that the end of our friendship was not caused by something i did. a couple of my other friends also had close relationships with him and he no longer wants anything to do with them either.
so, while i can take comfort in the fact that i didn't do anything wrong, it's still upsetting to know that someone who was once so important to me (and presumably, i was important to) doesn't care about me at all anymore. there are still things that make me think of him every so often, songs and movies mostly. and when that happens i always wonder, does anything ever make him think of me? and if he does, how is he thinking of me? fondly or with disdain? i'll probably never know.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

That is so sad.

I had a friend who I was really close to for years. One day, out of the blue she flipped out on me and stopped speaking to me. She was obviously really upset about something I apparently did but never communicated with me so, to this day, I have no idea what that horrible thing was! I reached out again recently after seeing her on Facebook and she refused my friend request and ignored my email. I just wish I knew what I did/said that could make her angry enough to still refuse to speak to me, even ten years later!

stefanie said...

i alternate between anger and sadness when i think of this person. i'm sad that what we once had is no longer but i'm angry that he could cut me out of his life so easily.

even though i'm confident that i didn't do anything to cause this, i almost wish i had because at least then i would know what happened.

Jane said...

I had something similar happen to me. You have to know that it's not your fault and let that make you feel better. Losing a friend sucks, it sucks more than anything in the world but just try and rememeber the good times. I felt the same way about wishing I had done something wrong because at least there would be a reason but just realize it's not you! Friends seperate and hopefully they come back together but in the mean time try and enjoy the friends you have now. It seems to me that you have a lot of good ones. I wish you luck with your friendship. It will all work out in the end, as cliche as that sounds, it's true.

stefanie said...

i've had other friendships fade away but none of them bothered me as much as this. and even though it's not something i DID, i wonder if it's just something about me? did i change? i know i've changed a lot over the past 8 years but i still have friends that i had before he came around so i can't imagine that i turned into some completely intolerable person. but i don't know? i can't beat myself up about it though.

Anonymous said...

i had the same sitch happen in HS (haha HS i know...) but it was with my best guy friend since 2nd grade. We were best friends for 9 years until our senior year where he all of a sudden felt like he was too cool for our group and got a gf from a different school that he didn't feel like introducing to us and swtiched 'groups' at school and didn't sit with us anymore or hang out with us anymore.

i haven't talked to him at all in 5 years and stopped doing so in my 2nd semester of senior year. i always think about him and wonder wtf?!?! and why he acted the way he did or why he has never tried to reconcile especially when he dated my cousin for nearly a year! (luckily i was away at school so i never actually saw this)

i was really bitter about it for a long time. obv. i still kind of am but since then i've learned what real friendship is anyways so i'm over it.