We made amends after that.. I messaged her on Facebook and apologized. I told her I would never cut her out of my life again, knowing full well I probly couldn’t keep that promise.. but things went back to a semblance of the way they were before.. at least with the communication, mostly texting at that point.. and of course, the occasional drive around town to get high.
I missed the banter, I missed my friend.. but I think my feelings in the situation were 200% stronger than hers. It was very misleading though, she continued to put emphasis on how special our friendship was.. given that I had feelings for her to begin with, that just made things worse.. I was living in a world of hopes, wishes, what-ifs and letdowns.
I saw her at work quite a bit, she would get gas or cigarettes, we would talk.. we would meet up when I was done with work and go for a roadie.. it started to get to the point where she rushed things again.. always in such a hurry to get rid of me.. the things she said didn’t add up to the way she acted around me. I always got the impression there was something she wasn’t telling me.
I don’t think she understood how much anxiety she caused me. Sometimes trivial things for the average person, tend to be a big deal to me. Not so much that I’m overly sensitive, it’s that when I think I found someone/something that makes me feel good, I chase that feeling, but over time the novelty runs out when they end up making me feel like shit. It’s literally like an addiction.
While we worked together at the restaurant, I always did my best to tell her how great of a worker she was back then. I had worked in many places before this, and she really worked her ass off.. there was always the goofing around, but never when there was a lot of work to be done. I encouraged her to find a new job around the same time, and she quit around the same time I did. I never told anyone, but I tried to get through to her.. I tried telling her.. but she wouldn’t listen. She is 95% of the reason I quit that job, I couldn’t stand being around her.
After that, she worked at a high end clothing store for a while, then ultimately got a job as an assistant manager at a jewelry store, just a half hour away.. in a decent sized mall..
So one day last summer(2015), I had to go to the mall to get some new jeans for work. There was another Mall in the city that was about 10 miles closer than the one she worked at. I decided I was gonna surprise her at work, just stop in and say “hi.” I could have gone to the other mall, the closer one.. but I decided to drive all the way to the one where she worked..
Something like that, to the average person.. just doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. I, on the other hand stressed out about it the whole way there. I kept thinking “does this make me creepy?” or that maybe she’ll be pissed that I showed up or some way for this to go horribly wrong. I just kept imagining scenarios where just showing up there is not an ok thing for me to do.
During that time, I had been severely isolating myself from the world, and going in to a busy mall, on a weekend, seeing someone who I have strong/mixed feelings for.. was very scary to me. I even went so far as to think “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” and “do something that scares you every day” and that was what I was doing. I went to JC Penny and found a decent pair of jeans to replace the ones I destroyed at work.. then took the path out into the mall, and out into the chaotic mall world.
I couldn’t bring myself to go directly there, my nerves were shot at this point. In hindsight, I don’t know why my fight or flight kicked in the way it did.. She brought out some of the scariest, and what I consider to be the weakest parts of myself. At the same time, I overcame some of those things, because I was at least in the building, I didn’t back out.. or change my mind at the last minute like I usually did.
I went to a few other stores first, that seemed like a good trade-off from charging through the mall and right up to the jewelry store. So I went to Spencer’s and Hot topic, looked around at funny shirts.. then wandered up to the food court and walked around a bit. I finally decided to just go see her.
I walked past the Jewelry store, probably 4 times.. I didn’t see her there at first, so I kept walking.. the second time, I did see her.. yet still kept walking, and of course repeated that one more time, until I walked way closer the last time, walking straight up to the huge glass window, that she was standing on the other side of. Of course she ran out and gave me a big hug, introduced me to her coworkers. I was nervous and sweating like you wouldn’t believe. She told me she’d text me after work, and see if maybe we could go for a drive or something.
So I lived through it, but it was not easy. I don’t really think I gained anything from the experience at all. I kinda considered it to be exposure therapy, do something that scares you, so that you get better at dealing with it. I did it, and still didn’t feel that I could have done it again, with any less anxiety. Who knows though? It’s not likely I’ll be in a situation like that for a very long time.
We did end up hanging out that night, but in the following weeks and months, she started flaking on me all the time. Literally making plans and breaking them an hour before. It became the norm from her. She promised me that she was gonna do better. It was empty as my promise not boot her off of my plane of existence. Every time I see one of those memes that says ”There’s no such thing as being too busy, it’s about prioritizing, if you want to be around someone, you’ll find a way” I think of her.
We kept up with the frequent texting. I started getting the feeling that the texting was getting to be too much. Her replies got fewer and fewer, and smaller and smaller. I just got the feeling once again, that I was a nuisance when I needed to talk. Granted that I needed to talk a lot, it’s hard for me to find people I’m comfortable with.. so when I do, I tend to lay a lot on them. I’m very well aware of that now. I try to watch myself, but it doesn’t always work.
There was one time in the midst of everything that I hadn’t heard from her for quite a while.. I kept texting her, just like the old days.. she wouldn’t respond. So I did the exact same thing back to her. I was at work.. finally, she texted me back.. she kept texting me and I just kept reading them, then sending nothing back. She finally sent me a text that said “alright, I’m coming into the gas station..” to which I replied something to the effect of “calm down, I just got all your messages.” She showed up 10 minutes later, with fake tears in her eyes, telling me how awful her life was, how busy she is, how she has no time for anything.. In hindsight.. it was all an act, an act to keep me in my place, an act to keep me wrapped around her finger, no matter how disrespectful she was to me. She used my fear of public confrontation to try to control me.
At this point it’s nearing the end of the summer of 2015, I had been having health issues for several months at this point. I was living in that motel and still working at the gas station, and I realized that I was never gonna be able to get my life in order while living there.. I couldn’t do basic things I needed to do in order to keep myself healthy. I only had a microwave and a mini fridge in my room, so I had no means to really cook anything for myself. I spent 2 years as a cook and couldn’t cook there.
Over time I had been leaning towards the idea of moving in with my dad, I needed time where I didn’t have to pay rent, and just didn’t need to worry about certain things.. my health came first. I told **** I was considering moving to my dad’s, which is about a 3 hour drive from where I was. Nothing was set in stone yet, but the more time passed, the more I realized it was probably for the best.
At that same time, **** told me that she was considering moving up north as well.. but a couple hours west of where I was headed. At first, it just seemed like she was toying with the idea.. but just like me, over time it became more and more of a reality.
After a few weeks, she told me she was moving for sure.
I started thinking about things a lot at that point, the way I felt.. the fact that I never told her, after talking to a much older friend of mine.. I decided I had to tell her.. for my own sake. I’ve been through situations similar to this before, and I let people walk away without telling them how I felt about them. It was something I should have done from day one, I have a tendency to think that my feelings aren’t important, I never express them, then it ends up being too late.
All of the sudden there was an end. I really think that’s the only thing that motivated me. I knew it was too little, too late at that point, but I really needed to get some things off my chest. I didn’t expect anything out of it.. but I felt that I needed to tell her.. just to be able to say I had the courage to express my feelings to someone who I cared for very much.
We had planned to go for a drive, one of the last ones before she left.. and that’s when I planned to do it. I practiced in my head what I was going to say, and imagined that it was gonna go horribly. But like many things in my life, when it actually came down to trying to tell her.. I just couldn’t do it.
She picked me up, I was trapped in my own head the whole time, I know I was distant.. I convinced myself that it wasn’t worth saying anymore. The more I listened to her talk, the less I liked what she had to say. The less I agreed with the way she chooses to live.. All the times I felt like we had a real connection, came crashing down under the idea that my mind, was clouded by how I felt. Clouded to the point that everything I never liked about her was now, at the end.. left to seep out from behind a thin layer of superficial attraction.
Underneath that layer was a person I didn’t feel I knew at all. I didn’t say much of anything that night, and honestly.. the whole time I just wanted to go home. She told me she would see me again sometime before she moved.. it was just a month or so away.
I think I was just mad at her that night. I knew she was moving, and I knew there was nothing I could do about it.. as selfish as it sounds, I was mad that this whole time she told me over and over again that our connection was special. Spoke as though there was an unstoppable force out there that kept pushing us back together every time I tried to tear us apart. But in reality, I was not really that important. It wasn’t good for my sanity, it had me on a roller coaster I couldn’t get off of. One minute I’m happy to be hearing from her, the next I’m pissed off because she wouldn’t respond to me for days, and even up to months.. I started to wonder how many other guys she had out there under the same “spell.”
After my failure to tell her how I felt, some time passed where I didn’t hear from her. I actually had still planned to tell her, but I wasn’t too concerned about it. I figured the next time we hung out before she actually moved.. then maybe I’d tell her.. I realized around that time that I hadn’t heard from her in a long time.. I think I tried to text her, but like usual.. I got no response.
About 2 weeks later, I get a text from her.. She had already moved.
Without a warning, she moved without telling me. She left before I had chance to tell her how I felt. I was disappointed, a true friend would have stopped in and said something.. said good bye. I got nothing. I got a text after the fact, that’s all I was REALLY worth to her.
In some ways, I was glad she was gone.. she had caused me so much anxiety and stress over the few years I knew her, that it was a relief to know that I would never have someone forcing me to have a confrontation with them, when I was in no mood to have it. Literally barging their way into my life.
I debated again whether or not I should tell her. On one hand, I thought it would make me feel better, and on the other hand.. the worst that could happen is that she never spoke to me again, either way she was very far away me now. So I did decide to do it, and used really the only means I had at that point.
Texting.
I told her exactly how I felt, and how long I had felt that way, and surprisingly.. I didn’t feel any better. She devalued my feelings, she condescended to me.. she played me. It may have not been a traditional player style, but she led me on.. she lied, misrepresented, exaggerated and plain old made shit up, to keep her hold on me. For what reason, is beyond me.. was she keeping me on the backburner in case her boyfriend found out that she was cheating on him, and probly even more than I knew about? I don’t have faith now that she actually told me as much about herself as she made it seem, I think she told me a watered down version of who she really was, just enough to get me to fall for her, in case she needed something.
I told her in the conversation, that I had the feeling there were things she wasn’t telling me, that she was hiding a lot of stuff from me, that I really didn’t know who she was. Her response to that was that she would go out of her way not to mention her boyfriend, because as she put it “I thought your feelings ran deep, so I didn’t want to upset you.” In the beginning, she bitched about him all the time..
She held my feelings hostage, and in doing so.. disabled me from acknowledging them, dealing with them.. and moving on with my life. As long as the real person behind the mask, her real life never found it’s way into my head.. she could keep me right where she wanted. She never told me the full truth about anything, and it was left up to my imagination to fill in the blanks.. that’s never a good idea.
The final straw was after I had moved. November of 2015, I texted her to let her know that I made it to my dad’s, and was getting ready to start things fresh. She had next to nothing to say.. her text was full of characters and void of substance. I might as well have been talking to a brick wall.
Towards the end of November I saw on her Facebook that she was engaged to her boyfriend, and that he had proposed on Halloween night.. I was so important in her life that she had to withhold that information from me too. When I imagine a real friend getting engaged.. I imagine a text that says “OH MY GOD I’M ENGAGED!”
She was once again trying to protect me from my own feelings, by not telling me. A friend should be able to be there, to share in the good times, and share in the bad. I think a friend would have told another friend about their engagement.. to maybe offer congratulations.. or a well wishing, or if it were appropriate, show indifference to the life she never shared, the life she pretended didn’t exist as far as I was concerned.
For a long time now, I've been outwardly emotionally dead. Even before this.. If I choose to have shady people in my life, people who only tell me partial truths to save me from the most basic parts of the human experience, feelings.. Love, hate, disappointment, hope and everything in between.. for their own selfish wants and needs, I have no one to blame but myself.
I know when something isn't right, I know when someone is using me, constantly putting my feelings on the back burner or denying me them all together.. under some guise that they're saving me from negative feelings.. no, they’re saving me from having any feelings at all.. its easier that way.
I was unable to express myself, because she only told me half truths.. she would give me just enough to keep me coming back, but nowhere near enough to acknowledge the way I felt, and find a way to move past it.. I'm just as much to blame, for never really making a REAL effort.
Feelings can be hard to deal with, but I'm tired of denying them myself and even more tired of people like this, who would deny me the truth to spare my feelings.. looking at it objectively, I never knew the real **** or even worse, that may very well have been the real ****..
A person who is so afraid of real connection, they'll lie and omit to keep a false narrative going because they only want the best of you.. not the worst, not the difficult, not the complication that comes with working through feelings to move on to a real friendship.. it was all talk, and no action on her part. The way she exaggerated what we were.
Denying those feelings is a terrible way to be. I hope that when she says those vows, and pledges her life to someone, that she comes clean about the filthy, sleezy way she has behaved over the past few years.. Because if I only know half of who she is, you can damn well bet there's someone else who only knows the other half.
The vindictive side of me wants to stir the shitpile, wants to air out ALL that dirty laundry, all the secrets she made me keep.. too many in number to mention in this post. it would be so easy.. I can't do it though, because I’m better than that. I'm not perfect, and I fed into her bullshit.. just as much as she kept feeding me, I never truly said “ENOUGH” and stuck with it.. giving up only my best behavior, albeit unknowingly.
That was a long time ago
