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Friendship?

A tale about a one-sided friendship, and a girl who can't muster up the courage to change it.

By Kassandra MorettiPublished 7 years ago 9 min read
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Friendship. It is a simple concept but it has always been a problem for me. As a young child, I was drawn to older kids who weren't always nice to me. As I grew older, I found myself a great group of girls to play with in the school yard. Of course, once high school started, like many friendships, they started to fade away and I only remained friends with two of them. Today, Kylie and Madison are still my very dear best friends. I'd see Madison every day because of school and I'd see Kylie a couple of times a year on birthdays and special occasions but we remained friends through and through.

Once high school ended, my transition to college was quite hard for me. I only had one friend and I had a really hard time making new ones. I didn't think this was a problem because my best friend Kelly was with me and I thought we'd be friends forever. Turns out I was wrong. Two years ago, my grandmother passed away. I took her death quite hard and I suffered from a deep depression. I wasn't going out anymore and to be honest I just wasn't as fun to hang out with. I realize that now. I can't say Kelly wasn't there for me at all. She came to the funeral, like a best friend would, she helped me talk it through, like a best friend would, but eventually she stopped understanding that I was in dire need to be helped. I started to close myself off to the world and maybe she didn't notice but I told her repeatedly that I needed help and that the way I was reacting had nothing to do with her or our friendship. I made that as clear as possible.

One night after school, I sent her a text thinking everything was fine. It was not. She texted me back a whole essay telling me how she wasn't really into being best friends anymore and how she just wanted to be acquaintances. She wanted space and she claimed that I forced her into liking the same things as me when in fact it seems like she pretended to like the same things, to get my approval. This text hit me at a very vulnerable time in my life and I just couldn't handle it. I immediately called Kylie telling her what had just happened. She couldn't believe it either. She later explained herself stating that she sent me that text because she felt like I didn't want to be friends with her anymore, even if I told her many times that my distance had nothing to do with her, and in fact our friendship helped me get through some of my really bad days.

After a month or two had gone by, it seemed out friendship went back to normal and everything was okay. I was starting to get better emotionally and I thought everything would go back to normal, but it didn't. I slowly began to realize that I was just trying to impress her. Everything I said and did was to show her how much of a good friend I could be, which was only because I felt like I was walking on eggshells around her or she'd text me the same thing she had done months before. As time past, I hated the feeling of walking on those same eggshells. Eventually, I went through a burnout for all the feelings I was suppressing about my grandmother, the load I had at school and evidently the stress I was dealing with about our friendship, hit me all at once. It was like everyone else realized that this was a toxic friendship yet I still hadn't.

As I left college for university, I was left without my best friend at school for the very first time. I was lonely and stressed out, not to mention depressed because I hadn't gotten help yet. I looked for a friend and she was not there to be found. I texted her and she texted back hours later with empty conversations, not even asking me how I found my first day at a new school. I felt like something was off but I tried to convince myself that it was all fine. As time went on, I would go to her school so we could have lunch together and she would ditch me to hang out with her new friends. She invited me once, of course I understood it was an empty invitation but I accepted anyways to my dismay. I sat there awkwardly eating my pizza trying to hold down my anxiety as she completely ignored me, not even introducing me to her friends. She didn't say a word to me the whole time, not even a look. I walked back to the lockers and cried for half an hour because I felt so humiliated.

Months later, I asked her to hang out for her birthday, I even ran to the store with no money in my pockets to buy her a gift. It's currently still waiting to be opened, in my closet, all wrapped up. I can't even bare to look at it because it would stir up too many emotions. I was mentally slipping away at this point. I was having panic attacks every day and my personality didn't even exist anymore as I was too anxiety-ridden to act like a real person. When it came time for my birthday, she told me she had to go to breakfast with other friends or she wouldn't have time to see them before she left for Italy. I calmly agreed and pretended like those words didn't put a dagger through my heart. She told me she'd come by my house later and we'd celebrate but she texted me happy birthday at 4:30pm telling me she couldn't make it. At 6pm, I saw her Instagram story with a picture of her writing down notes in her copybook with a tagline, #busy. It hurt even more to think that I wasn't important enough for a phone call to say the least. I begged her for days to take her out for hers and took hours making a video to wish her a happy birthday and she barely wrote me a message. What upset me the most was the fact that she was leaving for Italy and I was the only one making plans. It felt like she was ignoring every single one of them, not even thinking about seeing her 'best friend' one last time before she spent the whole entire summer in a different country. She called me a couple weeks into her stay in Italy. She told me the reason why she was so busy. She had found a boyfriend days before leaving and she wanted to spend time with him. Of course, I didn't mind, but what upset me is that she didn't even explain it to me while she was still here. My understanding of friendship is that you tell them everything that is important, which she does not do. Instead, I tell her everything with no information in return.

I started questioning everything I have ever done within our friendship. I felt like an outsider, I felt like I barely even mattered. I then started thinking that it was me. There must have been something wrong with me if she had just seemingly given up on our friendship. I couldn't take this toxic anxiety anymore. I finally went to get help and I am doing much better now. I am slowly starting to get my old self back and it feels really good. I used my summer to hang out with my other two best friends. We don't see each other on a daily basis as I saw Kelly but I knew when the going got rough, they'd be there and vise versa. It felt good to be back with the people I didn't overthink with. It was fun to let loose and be myself again. I enjoyed doing the simpler things with them like shopping and going out for lunch. It felt normal.

Once Kelly got back though, I started to get my anxiety back. I hated the feeling. I decided to make a decision about our friendship. I was going to invite her to hang out one last time and if she refused, I'd let it go and see where she took the friendship. As I expected, she refused. She texted me back a week later letting me know she had a date with her boyfriend and that we'd hang out soon. It has been two weeks later and still no contact from her. Not even a tag on a meme on Facebook which we would do practically every day. I had told myself, I wouldn't make the effort to keep up the friendship if she wouldn't do the same. As predicted she hadn't messaged me since September 2nd. Today is September 18th. I broke my promise to myself and messaged her today at 4pm. I felt like maybe she would think I didn't care enough about our friendship to message her. Another example of how toxic this friendship had really gotten for me. Now I'm here writing this post, waiting for a reply. None yet. Here I am, finding myself in this vicious cycle once more. I know I own most of the blame for letting her do this to me and never telling her about it but in a way I feel like if I finally do confront her, she'd tell me that she doesn't want to be friends anymore and I'd be left alone. Yes I have Madison and Kylie but Madison is moving to Chile with her boyfriend in a couple of months and Kylie is more of a low-key person. We don't necessarily enjoy the same things and she isn't one to hang out in very public places or go downtown. So yes, in ways I'm not alone but in others I am. I hope eventually I muster up the courage to confront her because I can't go on pretending that everything is okay when it's not. I guess in many ways, it's not the friendship that I miss, it's the memories.

All I can say is that if your best friend isn't putting in the time to hang out with you or talk to you, then maybe you should re-evaluate your friendship. If you are hurting from the same thing that I am, talk to your friend (I know it's quite hypocritical of me, but I'm much better at giving good advice then receiving it.) Take my story as a lesson, and don't let it get as far as I've let it go. Talk to your best friend. If they truly care about you, they'll listen and help ameliorate the situation or you'll just end up here like me waiting on a text message, anxiety-ridden.

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