The best friend who wasn’t.
I sit, on our couch, drinking wine from the wine glasses you bought me for my birthday freshman year. Last year, we would probably be sitting together, sipping on Yellowtail in your dorm room, discussing the minute details of our day until I fell asleep on your floor, unwilling to trek the three long floors down to my room. We were so inseparable and it was so exciting. From every night out to every night in, sharing a small stack or stuffing into an East Quad booth, there was nothing we wouldn’t do together.
Appropriately, we decided to live together sophomore year. I spent all summer imagining how fun it would be to be your roommate. I imagined us sitting on our porch drinking beers, failing to go out because staying in was too much fun, and living it out just like Monica and Rachel did.
But, that’s not what happened. Instead, roommate-hood pushed you away from me. It pushed you to lock yourself into you room as soon as I came home, to reject my attempts at friendship. It’s been a long, hard year of me watching you push me away. It’s been hard as I struggle to converse with you. Though I am normally open, I fear saying hello because I fear that you will not reciprocate the greeting. I don’t know how this happened. I don’t know how our friendship devolved so rapidly and so violently into a tense standoff. From eating breakfast together and walking to class each morning to allowing myself to be late from class so that I can minimize our interactions to protect myself from feeling so rejected, things have changed.
Friendship should be a lot of things. Supportive. Open. Fun. Inspiring. Sure, there can be conflict. But there can’t be hostility. There can’t be jealousy, there can’t be resentment, and there can’t be fear.
Losing your friendship, compounded by living in close quarters and sharing a bedroom wall, has been one of the hardest things I have grappled with this year. Why did we grow apart? The question haunts me daily as I tip-toe past your room so as to not impose or disturb you.
I hope that one day we become more comfortable together. I hope we can inquire about the other’s day and ask about the other’s family, just as we did freshman year. I hope we can rely on each other for arduous tasks, frustrating errands, and endless support. I hope we can have open conversations about the tension that pushes us so far away.
And if we can’t, that’s okay too. Learning what aspects of friendship don’t work is, perhaps, equally important as learning what aspects of friendship do work. I have learned to respect myself more through the experience of losing you — I realize the importance of surrounding myself with people who love and support me. I realize that sometimes, letting go of a friend is acceptable and healthy. I just never anticipated that the bonds that held us so strong could fray so rapidly. Well, thanks for the memories.
Photo courtesy of Her Campus.