In the Aftermath

[kitewithfish]

So, in the wake of yesterday's confusion of noncommunication and remorse, I'm feeling better and slightly more able to handle things. (For those of you following outside the friends-locked zone, a very close friend of mine told me that she'd been avoiding my emails for the last few months hoping that I'd get the hint that she did not want to talk to me. She severed all ties last night, and will be deleting all emails from me in the future without reading them. There was no explanation for this, and no clear point of origin for her actions. )

At this point, I would like to make the following announcements.

1. Much love to figureinthefog, spookiepookie, littlecatfeet, Emma-friend, J-Mo and 'Cedes bearing with me and emotional support in the wake of this whole mess.

2. As several of you guys are mutual friends of me and the person on the other side of this, I understand that this will be an incredible awkward position for you guys to be in for a while, and I will try as best as I can to keep you out of it as completely as possible. I do not want this to become a divisive point for our little cabal of friends, and if you feel like you're being pushed around by this, please tell me and I will try to work something out so that there's less pressure on you about it.

If I seem like I'm 'chatting you up' more than usual, it's not an attempt at politicking so much as a panicked response that falling out of touch with someone could mean that I come back to Swelles and find that we're estranged. I think I'm going to be a little freaked out for a while about this whole thing.

3. I do not like to walk away from relationships, and I do not throw people away. If you have a problem with me, please tell me. Don't sit on it and let it fester. Even if it's painful and sucky for you to have to discuss it, please please please don't just sit on it. Because I'm kind of oblivious to clear social cues at times and really might just not get the hint without you making it explicit. I would rather have an argument and feel like an asshole for something I did to offend you unknowingly than have you angry at me without any way to fix things.

Comments

[littlecatfeet.livejournal.com]

I said it before, but I am so sorry. Nobody, least of all a fun, quirky, caring and interesting person like yourself, deserves to have that happen to them. Whatever she's going through, whatever she thinks you did, it's a shitty way to deal with friends.

Be well.

[beanie-platypus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's kind of the thing, isn't it? Even though the painful part of this situation is that this relationship just disintegrated without warning, the fact that it *could* even happen like that seem s to suggest that there was already instabilities that I wasn't picking up on. Why fight for something that was not worth it? (Perhaps that was her philosophy...?)

But, ya know, whatever. This is not going to visibly affect my day to day life for a while (till I get back to school anyways) and even then it might not really be an issue- perhaps things will have cooled enough that we can at least be civil to one another and not stress out the group dynamics.

I've basically lost a day to worrying about this yesterday, and I'm just going to get on with the day to day stuff for now.

[blarney.livejournal.com]

Hey man, for the record--this same thing happened to me the first month or so of my senior year at swelles. Except, it was a whole group of friends instead of just one, and they posted on their livejournals instead of telling me personally. Totally nuts.

Two things may help--first of all, the end of any relationship is hard. In our culture, we tend to idolize romantic relationships, so breaking up with an SO is often accompanied by people coddling us and sympathizing. Try to think of this friend breaking up with you as similar to a break up with an SO, just so you can allow yourself to feel sad about it an stuff.

Secondly, in retrospect, I was living a very emotionally unhealthy lifestyle when I was best friends with those women, and no longer spending time with them left me with a significantly less toxic environment in which to live. Though I still miss the friendships I had with almost all of them (and am still like, WTF mate? at their essentially breaking up with me over livejournal), I can recognize that they were big on the hate, and releasing that hate allowed my senior year at Wellesley to be much, much more fun that it would have been.

So I'm just saying--perhaps in time, though the sting will still be there, you'll be able to understand that this end is a good thing, especially if the person in question thinks it's appropriate to break up with people over firstclass (seriously, wtf).

[beanie-platypus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, electronics and relationships do not mesh well sometimes. (Though I'm glad it didn't turn you off lj permanently- it's nice to hear from you, and I've known people to flee the blogosphere for far less painful stupidity.)

I'm not so much sad over the end of the relationship, but more of my own *idea* of who she was and how our friendship was going to be in the future. I mean, doing this seriously damages the worth of her friendship in my eyes (not that I wouldn't want to reconcile, but enough that I would be very wary of her in the future)- this wouldn't have happened in the version of our relationship in my head. That there was such a big gap between the image and the reality... maybe I didn't really know her that well.

Fortunately, the people I've talked to so far about this have generally been as confused about it as me, and they don't seem to be engaging in Herd-Girl 'shun the nonbeliever' style. I actually feel like I've been getting a lot of support, both from people who know all the parties involved, and those who just know me. So, while it's sucky to have one friend bail on me, I feel comforted by the fact that so many others are still here.

Anyhoo, time heals all wounds, and wounds all heels, so distance and perspective seem like the operative goals here.

[no-girl.livejournal.com]

I´m sorry I´m on the other side of the world (mas o menos...) and can´t offer anything more than my profound sympathies for having such a shitty thing happen to you. Sometimes it´s even WORSE when it´s a friend ¨break up¨, because friends are supposed to be there for ya no matter what and not play those kind of infantile mind games. Much love from Oaxaca, chica! And don´t worry, you´ll get over it, you´re tough!

<3

M

[beanie-platypus.livejournal.com]

I am about as tough as silly putty, my friend, and you know this.

However, like silly putty, I am very resilient- I will indeed be dented by things, but I will slowly ooze my way back to my own natural puddle of happiness if circumstances do not intervene.