Punching Bag on Pages

Friendship

|Dedicated to sovereigns for the wonderful cover|

"Maybe we judge our friendships too much by what we would do for somebody else and not enough by what they would, or wouldn't do for us."

My teacher used this as the last sentence of one of his books that he had written. It really got me thinking about my friends. There is a high probability that one of my friends is reading this, awkward. Therefore I will be using code names in place of their real names.

I'm writing today to move the battle between sorrow and anger in my head, to Wattpad. One of my friends, let's call her Daisy, and I were practically sisters. I liked to think we were the same person, always on the same page about everything. Our opinions never differed, we never argued, all that good stuff. Countless sleepovers were spent spilling secrets and discussing problems in our lives. Daisy had always been number one on my theoretical list of friends and I knew I'd do anything for her. However doubt started to creep into my mind.

Yes, there were high points where I'd find myself thinking "How could you ever doubt that friendship? She's Daisy! You two are the best of friends, nothing has changed." Then other times I'd say "Who is she anymore? Why has she been slowly withdrawing from me?" It's like being my sister is dropping on her priority list, my importance in her life is slipping away. Yet after every time I questioned it, I went back to thinking we were fine. I always bounced back involuntarily.

All of sudden this giant gap laid between us. Like in The Land Before Time when the ground just split in half without warning. First of all, I was the last person to hear about the losing of her V-card. I apologize to whoever decides to read this. I apologize if it's you, Daisy. But confiding in a friend is what makes the entire best-friend experience so special. Knowing everything about each other is the essence of that. From that point on it seemed like she keep taking off pieces of her disguise. A couple of months later (if I remember correctly) they were having problems in their relationship. She did tell me about them, thankfully. I was able to give her some sister-like advice. After they had broken up she had, let's say, brief sexual relations with two to three other guys. The main problem wasn't just that fact, but she never told me. In that span of like two months where I was (for a lack of better phrases) "left in the dark", other people starting talking shit about her. I was in art class when someone mentioned how one of the seniors had sex with Daisy in his car, and how she's getting around the block (if you know what I mean). So I turned around, not knowing the truth, and started defending her. "Daisy is a respectful person; she would never randomly sleep with guys. She would have told me if she did." A girl scoffed, "Well apparently you don't know her well enough."

Weeks go by, and I attempted the "30 Letters to Burn" challenge. I waited a couple of weeks before giving Daisy the letter addressed to her. Even though it went against the rules of the challenge, I felt like I needed to show her how I felt. Daisy had been feeling insecure right about then, so I made sure to talk about how special she was. It contained every emotion, and every hilarious memory that I could recall. She even cried reading the letter. I had included stuff like "You are the sister I never had, I cannot imagine a world without you as my best friend... you're absolutely beautiful inside and out... you're the one I depend on when I need someone to talk to and I hope I am that person for you too."

But only a couple of days later, I found out about Daisy's secrets at my own birthday party. What caused me so much hurt was that Daisy didn't even tell me herself that night, it was Bella (another fake name). For the record, Bella isn't the best person in the world (Daisy even mentioned one time that Bella irritated her). Bella mentioned it while we were hanging out with some of my guy friends and I just looked at Daisy saying something along the lines of "Is that true? Why did you not tell me?"

What I wanted to scream was, "You told Bella of all the fucking people in the world? I defended your integrity in front of other classmates. Am I that unimportant to you? Are all of these years of being best friends nonexistent?" Clearly when I thought she reigned as my best friend, I didn't consider the fact that maybe I wasn't hers. If Daisy had just told me what she did, I wouldn't be as upset. Daisy knows that I would never judge her. She didn't even seem to notice the betrayal I was suffering from. Or maybe she did, and that's why we seem farther apart. For the rest of that night I wondered what other secrets Daisy was keeping from me. Should I not be angry?

Now when I see her, she's like a stranger instead of the person I thought I knew best. I don't have any classes with her, so we really only see each other in the hallways. Months have passed since Daisy and I had hung out. Every time I have tried to arrange a sleepover, she bails. It's been at least five times. Maybe what hurts the most is that I want to our friendship back to what it was, and Daisy doesn't. Just a possibility. So now our dream of living next to each other in log cabins (for real, we had it all planned) was never meant to be a reality? Our promises to be each other's maid of honor will now become a fantasy? Maybe drifting apart was inevitable, like a fire that slowly ran out of fuel. Daisy just continues to fade from my life.

As an update, we just hung out last night. It was fun, our conversations were nice and open, like nothing had really changed. Maybe we're just growing apart naturally now. I mean, Daisy is the kind of person who would straight up tell me "I don't want to be your friend." So, i guess she does care. But things were still so different, because of all the time we weren't together. Who knows what will happen now, and i certainly don't want to hold this long grudge. Ugh, just so many uncertainties in my life. Maybe I'm just looking way too into this, and she never meant to hurt me. Maybe this natural course is not her fault, nor mine.

Can we steer away from this topic now? Moving on to the next rant.