Spilt Milk

There are so many people who have come in and out of my life.  Tons.  Kind of strange considering how young I am.  Makes me wonder if it's me?  I just can't deal with certain things, I suppose. 

As a kid, I didn't have much choice.  If someone decides that they don't want to play with you, you go do something else with someone else...falling back on siblings if necessary. 

Now as an adult, it's been more difficult.  I've only had one good friend at a time.  Ever.  In high school, it was a girl with whom I spent hours in the local coffee shop.  But then money got involved when we took a trip abroad and she didn't pay my mother back (neither of us had a credit card the time and my mom was kind enough to offer).  It's been about seven or eight years now and I guess we won't be seeing that money ever again.  Oh well.  Besides, she was nice to talk to, but was a kind of "out of sight out of mind" person...and we went to different universities.  All I was good for was a place to sleep when she decided to come to my university town.  I dropped her.

Then, in college, there was a girl.  I still keep contact with her.  But the evenings wandering around and the weekend chinese take-out ended with college.  She lives in the same town as I do and I see her maybe once a year.  She's nice, but I guess we don't have much in common.

I had some really good aquaintances in Germany, but no good friends.  I don't miss many of them...  And the people that I wanted to be friends with scorned me.

Nowwwwwwwwwwwwwww.  Most recently, there was a girl I REALLY loved like a sister.  We were super close.  She came to me with her problems and I didn't mind telling her about mine.  I made a mistake in that friendship.  Friends are not really like sisters.  You cannot always speak your mind and be sure that they'll still be there.  I was tactless once after about a year and a half.  I didn't like the way some of her other friends behaved and the way they were influencing her.  I told her that...and I should have been kinder.  It's not that she stopped speaking to me exactly, but very long periods went by without word from her.  And when we did chat, it wasn't comfortable anymore.  We were probably both watching what we said.  She thinks I'm judgemental and I was hurt by how long she avoided us.  After about six months of not seeing her, I decided it'd be better to amputate.  My children were really confused and hurt, because "Khale" wasn't visiting.  I thought it better that they not have to go through it all again however much it hurt me.  They don't talk about her so much anymore and honestly, that's probably the best thing.  If I ever have contact with her again, I'll leave my children out of it.  It's not fair to them to have to lose someone they've learned to love so much.

It's been months now.  She's missed so much and I've missed her.  My pregnancy, the birth of my son, Jayjay's first day of school, etc.  I know a little of what's gone on in her life all these months, but I'm sure I've missed a lot, too.  But I know she's gone the way of her new friends and that she seems happy with that.

I don't form friendships easily.  I don't take people into my heart easily.  It took me almost two years just to get used to my husband.  But I really loved her and I feel like she's died.  I'm in mourning of our friendship.  I wrote her all those months ago and told her I was sorry and that I knew that the deterioration of our friendship was my fault.  She never wrote back.  Maybe that's one of the things that hurts most.  I let her in only to discover that one disagreement would be the end of our friendship.  It wasn't as strong as I thought.  She didn't think of me as I did of her. 

I made a mistake.