Blogosaurus Vex

March 10th, 2009

I have debated writing about this for a long time and finally decided to go ahead because it’s been on my mind, and I find it helps me to talk things out a bit here rather than just stew on them.  If any of my lovely readers know the person in question, please refrain from mentioning her name.

A couple months ago I had a breakup with a long time friend.  It was sort of an implosion really, in that nothing was ever actually said (“I think we should see other people… and not each other.”  “Okay.”  “Okay bye.” “Bye.”), just suddenly the two or three calls a day I used to receive stopped.

I have mixed feelings about this.  We had a long history and I have a nostalgic attachment to her which makes me sad.  But the truth is we hadn’t been enjoying each other’s company for a long time.  By the end I was constantly exasperated with her and I imagine the reverse was also true.  The end was probably triggered by me, in that I said something she interpreted as passive aggressive, and that was the end.  Goodbye 17 years of friendship.

So as I say, I feel some sadness.  But I’m also relieved.  I guess we’d grown apart and it was becoming harder and harder to get along. And I didn’t know what to do about it.  There seemed to be no easy way to bring up the problems in our relationship when as far as I could tell the problems were our personalities.  Either we liked each other, or we didn’t.  I think we didn’t any longer, but habit kept us in contact for a long time after satisfaction in the friendship had died. How do you say to your long time friend, “I don’t like talking to you any more and I’m pretty sure you feel the same way about me.  What say we call it a draw and go our separate ways?”  I mean, as difficult as things were, it’s not like I stopped caring for her.  She’s a fine person and deserves good things.  I struggled with not wanting to hurt her by ending things, but knowing I was hurting her by being an annoyed and impatient friend.  I had a lot of guilt over this at the time, and also felt ashamed of my choice to do nothing, sliding towards the implosion, rather than be direct and honest about the situation.

So I said something that was taken the wrong way but I should have known that would happen, and shouldn’t have said it.  In that sense I’m sorry I said it… and yet, I don’t want the friendship back.  So maybe my comment was good after all.  It was not a breakup engaged in with integrity, but at least it happened.

Still, it is strange to think that after all these years, things are closed between us.  We’ve had falling outs before but at the ripe old age of 29 I am no longer interested in maintaining on and off, “frenemy” relationships.  I’m done.  The farther away I get from our friendship the clearer it becomes to me that this is the right situation.  But, I would want to know if she was planning to get married, or was pregnant.  Or if something bad happened to one of her parents.  I don’t want to be close again, but I still care about what happens to her I guess.  I don’t imagine I will know any of those things, and I feel sad about that too.

This feels hard.

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