The Friend
by: anonymous
We sat on the floor, watching Friends while flipping through People magazines with homework long abandoned. This year Matthew McConaughey was the sexiest man alive, but I could only talk about my devotion to Jake Gyllenhaal. We debated about team Jennifer vs Angelina and you always thought I was wrong for siding with Brad. We put on Avril Lavigne and Fall Out Boy and danced around your room, belting out the words. Your older sister was always there to remind us how much cooler she was, but I didn’t care. I had never laughed so hard, never felt the instant urge be around someone all the time, you were my new friend. The only friend who asked so much of me, and yet the only friend who could make me laugh this hard and feel so important - like I was needed.
The years went by with birthday parties and sleepovers, college visits, late night phone calls, trips home for Thanksgiving. Through crushes, mean girls, and break-ups we had eachother. You could always make me smile, I wasn’t sure what it was you saw in me but I liked how it felt to be your friend. We could pass the time talking about anything, imagining where we’d be in the future, making plans.
But you had an angry side, a side brought out when you felt victimized. Friendships evaporated around you, but I was always your constant. I could never predict what it was I would say to flip the switch and become the one you were mad at, but I had come to know this pattern - perfecting my apology and waiting for your sheepish call, notes declaring that you “couldn’t make it through life without me, that my ability to handle you was uncanny”. And we’d be right back where we started, again and again.
Before we knew it 15 years had passed, birthday cards piling up and collecting dust. We had drifted at times, but you never let me drift too far - you made sure of that. Though we lived in different states, my friends here knew that I would drop everything when you called - or if I didn’t I would stare at my phone with my mind miles away.
I knew you were in pain. You had led me to believe I was nothing to you, and at the same time the only person who could help, the only one you really needed. And I wanted to be that, because I had been that for so long I didn’t know what I would be without it. I watched as you let things fall apart - losing your job, skipping out on the therapist I found for you, shutting out your family, screaming at me that I would never understand. I tried to keep things at bay, just in balance enough, scared that you would lash out at any minute - at me, or worse, at yourself and I wouldn’t be there to stop it.
The phone rang in the middle of the night and I woke up with a jolt to your phone call. You said you were going to kill yourself, there was nothing I could do to stop you. There was the sharp feeling in my chest again, the one I had come to link to you, filled with dread. This was what I had feared, what had held me back and tied me to you for so long. I froze not knowing what to do, thinking this was a trap but hating myself for thinking that. I called you and paced back and forth, measuring my words, staying on the phone until you released me. Until you said it was okay to go. Shaky I would have hung up the phone, knowing it was only a matter of time until your next call and hoping I would have the right words to say then.
Because there would always be next time. The time you told me that you hoped my friend died because I had promised her I would take her to the doctor and couldn’t stay on the phone with you. The time you called me from your boyfriend’s backyard as you tried to break into his house. When you told me I was nothing and would hurt anyone who ever met me. And then the apology, the note, the speech, the promise that you couldn’t live without me. And I would forgive you. Defend you to my family and friends, to myself. Every time. And we would laugh, falling back on our memories but each time having less and less to break the fall. We couldn’t remember the last time we had made a new good memory.
I left you at the Greyhound station. You had used 15 years of knowing me to perfect the words that could hurt only me the most. You slammed the door and turned around to look at me one more time before walking away. I knew it, but you didn’t believe me yet, this was the last time I would see your face.
Moments of my life will always be tainted - by memories of your phone calls at 3am, a fight that you were having with someone I’d never met, standing in the corner in a crowded room - the phone pressed to my ear talking to you. Tainted by the outbursts of anger and my never ending need to fix it, to return to solid ground. The relief that came when you forgave me, whether or not I knew what I had done wrong. Even when your name on my phone would make my heart sink into my stomach, I craved having the right thing to say to make it better - the only person who could understand you, the only person you needed. This delicate dance that could leave me feeling so full and then so desperate. And now, new moments will be tainted by your absence, both the relief that I don’t have to walk on the eggshells you laid around my feet, and also by the sadness that you aren’t by my side - the prick of guilt for needing it to be this way.
Now I sit on the floor, the letters that you wrote to me strewn across the carpet. I look up at my partner, our dog curled under his feet, and I feel a sense of calm wash over me. Reading through the words you wrote to me I understand how you won me over again and again. I thought I had to be everything to everyone to be someone worthy, but now I know that I am enough. I don’t know where you are now or who you call for a 2am rant, you don’t know that I’m planning a wedding - moving on means we have lost the privilege of knowing these things about each other. But I have grown to accept that. I forgive you, and I forgive myself...the bittersweet salvation of letting go.
This beautiful piece was written by a client who completed the Sanctuary framework with me.
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