Amelia

Names have been changed for privacy reasons, but all events are true.

Sometimes I catch myself thinking about the best friend from my co-dependent friendship that dominated my adolescence.

Dramatic, I know, but Amelia and I were close for so long. We were both bi, I was still under the impression that I was a girl, and we confessed that we’d had crushes on each other over the years late at night as we stared at her ceiling. She had baby pink walls and fairy-lights strung around the room. I could feel the heat where our arms almost touched. We used light blankets during the summer. I told her I loved her. She said she loved me back. She had a boyfriend, so she didn’t mean what I meant.

A few years and a lot of terrible things passed. Their relationship was toxic, she became distant, and I said some things I’m not proud of. I don’t exactly regret it, but it had been unkind. That relationship ended but we didn’t get any closer. Then she was in a different relationship, seemingly less bad for her health but she started talking to me again. She hadn’t spoken to me in months at this point, but she would drive over to my house and pick me up. We’d drive around and she’d tell me about this guy until it seemed like she didn’t even like him.

We got a place together when we were eighteen. It wasn’t going to be a long-term thing; she was moving out of state for uni. Still, we wanted to be out of our parents’ place for a while before we headed into the next chapter of our lives. This is where things got really weird. It was such a slow change though. At first, everything was fine, then her boyfriend started telling me not to, ‘get so fussy’ over things. I knew immediately that for every horrible thing she told me about him, there was one that she said to him about me.

I would bring up things that she did that bothered me. She’d tell me very vaguely that there were, ‘lots of little things’ I did too. Nothing would change and we’d move on with our lives.

The real nail in the coffin for our relationship was when we went clubbing together. It was a town I didn’t really know, a club I hadn’t been to, and it was just the two of us. It was also the very first time I’d ever been clubbing in my life. Everything was good. Great, even. Then she met a guy she liked. She left me there that night.

The next day she was all apologetic and sorry and so sad that she would do this thing to me. It might sound ridiculous, but I wasn’t deep enough in the lease to not forgive her. I just said it was okay, not to do it again, and moved on with my life.

She broke up with her boyfriend. He accused me of manipulating her. He probably still blames me for their relationship ending, but to me, it looked more like she wanted to sleep with his friends. That’s what she started doing about a week after they broke up, anyway.

The lease ended, we moved away from each other and started talking less. Nearly not at all. I was getting on with better things. I met people that actually cared about me. People I didn’t have to argue with when they upset me. I started to realise I was not a woman, although I hadn’t figured out that I was a man yet. I was becoming a better version of myself.

Then, for reasons beyond me, she expected me to actually go to visit her on the Gold Coast. I’d said that I would, but I didn’t actually plan to do it. I said it with the same nonchalant dismissal as I told my international friends that I’d see them. That ‘Yes of course person in Canada, we will meet and, hell, let’s get married while we’re at it’ sort of energy, but applied to the more doable travelling over one state line. Then she bought me a plane ticket up there.

Unbelievably, while I was there, she left me with her other friends so she could deal with drama between her and her not-boyfriend. We went to the beach, but only with one of the other guys she was seeing. We went to a strip club together so she could talk to one of the girls she was interested in seeing. Finally, it happened. We went to a club, she met someone, she left with him and left me with a dead phone and two older men I’d never met. She knew them, but I’d only met them that night. I squeezed into the back of their car, next to a T.V one of them was transporting.

Maybe it wasn’t kind of me, but I will admit the boys and I had a bit of a bitch about her. We talked about how terrible it was for her to do this, I told them it wasn’t the first time. We ran through a couple of conversations, one of them landed on debating the legality of rape and I was very aware of how little room there was to move between the T.V and the car door.

I want to be clear, nothing happened and those two men were otherwise polite despite being less than aware of what constitutes a comfortable conversation.

When I got back to her house, she opened the door and I called her a bitch. The word spat from my mouth. She seemed surprised. She reeled at the word, her eyes wide and asked me what I was talking about. I pushed past her into the white tile hallway and started a rant about how’d she’d left me. I threw my shoes into the guest room I’d been set up in. She kept saying that she knew I was safe, as if safety was the only possible problem here. I grabbed some clothes and told her I was taking a shower since I was still in the clothes from the night before.

In the shower, I remembered how long I was still there for. I gave up arguing. The water washed my anger away and reality set in. I was stuck up there. In that moment, I felt myself give up on her completely. I wasn’t going to give her the benefit of the doubt on anything.

I laid back on her bed and stared at the ceiling. The walls were white and the sun was blinding. She paced around the room, putting away her laundry and telling me about how her night had gone after she left me. I played along with her, telling her that the vodka goggles were worse than beer goggles, but I wasn’t laughing. Part of me wanted her to lay down next to me. I wonder if I would have rescinded on my decision to never speak to her again once I got home.

The day I left she didn’t come into the airport with me. Her friend dropped me at the door and she only got out of the car for a quick hug goodbye. Honestly, I was thankful. I walked past the sliding doors and let go of the act. My shoulders relaxed for the first time in days. The smile fell and my jaw dropped, finally unclenched. I felt like a human being again.

I haven’t spoken to her since that day. I don’t intend to speak to her again. Sometimes I think about her and my heart aches for those quiet moments, when the two of us were alone and the rest of the world had melted into nothing. Then I remember everything else and I know she isn’t worth it. I wonder if she feels the same way about me, but I don’t care enough to dwell on it.