Losses

Today is someone’s birthday. Someone I care for a lot. Or cared for, at one stage.

We have many friends that come and go in our lives, but only one or two are really really good friends. I mean, a stay-up-with-you-while-you-cry kind of friend. A friend that will go to the 24 hour garage and buy chocolate for you in her PJs at 3 in the morning, and then eat it with you while listening to you moping and being depressed about a guy (that she doesn’t even like). A friend that will drop everything to be there for you, a friend that will help you finish your varsity assignment (even if it means staying up until the early hours of the morning), a friend that understands how you feel, a friend that really listens to you, a friend that knows all the skeletons in your closet and loves you still, a friend that really wants to know what’s happening in your life (from the big stuff to the really insignificant things), a friend that makes you laugh until your tummy hurts, a friend that laughs when you fart and doesn’t get embarrassed, a friend you can pee in front of…

I think you know what I mean. Either you are lucky enough to have someone like that, or you long for someone…

I used to have a friend like that. But in one fateful weekend it all went up in smoke. It all went pear-shaped when I didn’t really approve of the guy that she was with. A master manipulator. I hadn’t seen her for months, and was looking forward to an extended nightly chat about what we had gone through in the past few months, but he somehow convinced her not to spend any alone-time with me. They actually even went off to the pub the day we arrived – leaving us to “recover from the long trip”. The whole weekend we felt so out of place – it was like she was a different person. I finally plucked up the courage to put these things down in an email after we had left, and her response was devastating. Instead of trying to see the value of what I had written, she attacked me verbally, using all my deepest hurts that I had trusted her with against me. She said I was wallowing in self-pity, and that I was ungrateful, and loved to be friends with “problem cases”.

I was reeling. This friendship of over 5 years that I thought could withstand anything (we had been through a lot together; we had even lived together), crumbled in one weekend, because of a guy that she had known for 3 months. In the mean time she has married this guy. Our friendship has been over for more than a year now, but still, not a day goes by where I don’t think of her. Despite the fact that she hurt me to my deepest core, I still miss her. Even on the best of days.

Happy birthday, H.