6.10.2011

i lost a friend.

        I guess this really isn't anything new. It's not new in the sense that he's been lost for quite a while, and it's not new in the sense that people lose friends all the time. I am still in the process of accepting my latest loss. Near the end of my relationship with D, I asked ZJ if he would still be my friend if we broke up. His response: "Yes. You know, if I didn't want to be friends with you I could have done that a long time ago." At a point when I needed to hear them most, these were some of the most comforting words of my life.
        There is no good reason that we are not friends anymore, other than that I screwed up and pushed him away. While I did that, I guess I never really believed that I would need him again, or maybe I never really believed that he would actually leave me for good. Either way, it doesn't matter anymore. What's lost is lost. He won't speak to me. In person if I approach him he will acknowledge me, but he has told people that I seem to give him this big fake smile whenever I see him. I try to chat him up on skype, but he just ignores me. I don't know what's happening anymore. I cannot even speak to him about this. EG's existence doesn't help at all either. Our schism is simply stuck, and I suppose I did it to myself. I have no choice in the matter now.
        Losing a friend is kind of like a breakup, but I really do think it is worse. Maybe you weren't so deeply and emotionally intertwined with a friend, but it is still a heartbreak all the same. It's worse because friends are not supposed to leave you. Boyfriends come and go. They are supposed to, especially at my age. I knew in the back of my mind all along that D would leave me and that he would cut me ever so deeply. That's just how the vast majority of relationships end up. On the contrary, friendship is supposed to last past all of these hot romantic relationships. Friendship goes deeper. There is no need to say sweet nothings to your friends because they know them already and you aren't really afraid to lose them. A great friendship should be stable and comforting.
        ZJ was more than just a friend to me. He was the brother I never had. I really looked up to him. His grades weren't that great and he wasn't that good looking, but he knew what was important in life. He knew the right things to say and everyone loved him. He always got his point across, and his messages were concise and insightful. While my mind frantically tried to find comfort in a state of perpetual confusion, he was a voice of reason. Later his role came to be fulfilled even better by LE, but that didn't make me value ZJ less. As of last year, and even the beginning of this school year, ZJ was the only person from high school who I just knew I would keep in contact with. We were supposed to invite each other to dinner parties and have our kids over for play dates and have every Christmas and Thanksgiving together and laugh about all the silly things we did when we were teenagers. I couldn't, and I still can't, say that about anyone else. I looked up to him, my big brother who I was afraid of sometimes, who I would be annoying to much of the time. Now he won't look at me at all.
-T.

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