I didn’t realize a reproduction of Rome’s Angel of Grief was practically in my own backyard until very early this morning. I went out and took pictures of her. As I was editing them, I realized that I identified with her. Angels are portrayed as somewhat innocent things. She’s grieving and hurting and just lost.
I’m still new to most things relating to other people, so I feel a bit naive, or innocent, sometimes. I lost everything and everyone I knew, and the only thing I seem capable of doing is grieving for what is lost.
Yesterday was not a good day. To be perfectly honest, it was borderline suicidally bad. Someone was just everywhere, yet not. “Everywhere” as in spaces where words should go, but bits of the conversation were just missing. It happened over and over again until I broke down and actually got truly angry for once; that doesn’t usually happen to me. But I hit pitch black rage mode and it just expanded from there.
It didn’t go over well.
I’m not sure why people seem to revel in telling me all the reasons they think I’m wrong about pretty much everything, but it happened again. I made one snappy, frustrated comment, and a so-called close friend (the only one I have left, really) attacked me. I said I was disappointed and explained why. My friend took the one fragment of a sentence out of everything I said which could be applied towards her and raged against me in public, where others could see.
It’s funny… People tell me I should stand up for myself more and stop being so nice. Yet the second I try to do that, the same people tell me I’m wrong. How is someone supposed to learn anything if there’s never any positive feedback, ever? All I ever hear is how wrong I am.
I discovered something, though, buried deep in that rage. I think I got to the root of what bothers me about this whole thing. It isn’t always that I miss you, because sometimes I don’t, to be perfectly honest. As much as I want you back in my life, I don’t miss you yelling at me. I don’t miss you telling me that I’m stupid for saying pretty much anything.
I don’t miss what you did and how you never apologized for it.
That right there is the root of everything. You know what you did, and you know how you blamed me for everything. But… I’m sure you also know the truth, don’t you? It’s easy to just blame someone else for everything. Even your so-called closest friend knows this and has called you out on it. If you put the blame on someone else and let them carry it, then you don’t have to sit there and let the knowledge that you had a hand in the responsibility eat you alive. It should. You should feel what it’s like to carry this; to not be able to talk to ANYONE about it. No one would want to hear it, anyway. Plus, I’m not the type to spill that sort of dark secret to anyone with ears.
I wouldn’t do that to you.
I can only imagine what you told everyone about me. I’m sure it was something pretty huge, since my closest friends now keep me at arm’s length and tell me I “don’t know the reality of the situation.” No, I don’t. No one will tell me. Even worse, no one who calls me a friend even bothered to consider that stories have two sides, and maybe they should consider mine. Your wheel squeaks a thousand times louder than mine, so you got what you wanted.
You ruined me.
My friends have abandoned me. You abandoned me mere hours after heatedly asking me when you’d EVER done that. I’m left with a secret that has been warped and twisted into something so awful, it makes me feel like a monster. I feel like I never want to be around people again.
Last night, I didn’t want to be anymore. At all. I just wanted the pain to stop.
I asked you if you were really going to sleep. That’s it. Annoying, sure. But it doesn’t make me a monster or a predator or any of those other things you implied that made me want to die. Why would you do that? Do you really feel that much better, knowing what you did, how you blamed it on me, and left me alone with it. You have to know that it just festers and boils under the surface.
That’s where the real rage comes into play. You got off scot free. You got to keep your friends, keep your life. Everything’s just peachy, or so it seems. I’m here, alone, with this poisonous secret eating me alive and killing what’s left of my soul. And that? That isn’t fair.
All That Remains has a song called “The Waiting One.” The whole thing speaks to me on some level, but there’s a line in it that triggers massive emotion every time I hear it:
How could you do this to me? Betrayed by my closest friend.
How could you do this to me? I won’t let you hurt me again.
It could be too late for me. I feel like I’m headed somewhere I don’t want to go, and it’s only a matter of time before I get there. Is that what you really want? What everyone wants? For me to take this broken shell of a person and sweep myself under the rug, permanently?
I’m so broken, it’s hard to feel anything anymore. Whenever I do feel, I grieve for what was lost. That includes me. I’m breaking down further than I realized was even possible.
I didn’t know dust could break.
So it’s been five months since the world broke. Tomorrow will make two months since you last spoke to me. Why does it still hurt so much? This time last year, we were well on our way to repairing our friendship. You re-added me on Mother’s Day, after I told you I wasn’t going to be the one to do it.
It’s different this time, though. It felt more permanent from the moment it happened. It isn’t fair. I feel like I’ve lost all of my friends because everyone landed on your side. I hate that sides were chosen; you said you did, too. I know you didn’t want me to lose my friends. You know that group is all I have. Still is. Still was.
People got irritated because they judge the situation without knowing all of it, but I can’t tell them all of it. I won’t. That the reason you resent me is because of something that could have happened, but something I’d never do. I always considered it an unfortunate accident. I never would’ve had you arrested. I never would’ve called the police. I never should’ve said anything to your roommate when she saw me. I suppose that was my fatal error. You let it build in your mind and it ate away at you until seeing me caused a reaction… Which, by the way, was dumb, because we’d seen each other before that and things were fine. Great, even. When you came up here around this time last year was the highlight of my year. …Even if that’s when I fell; when I saw you sleeping, and I just knew.
You told me I don’t get to love you. I wish I had that option. That would make everything so much easier. I should hate you for the way you treated me; what you did to me. …But I don’t. I still wonder about you and hope you’re doing well. I miss you. Why?
Why do I still break down several times a week? It creeps into my head and builds until I’m sitting there, crying, and wishing I could just die to make the pain stop. It even happens at work. Thank goodness they sent me off to Siberia, so no one sees it when it happens. I just dive for the Ativan and wait for it to numb me back to nothing so I’m able to function on some level.
I guess I should congratulate you; you “got away with it”… With everything. You never even apologized for what you did in that “accident” last year. You made it my fault. You made everything my fault. Some of the things you said to me during that last phone call have traumatized me to the point I don’t know if it’s possible for me to function normally.
You implied I did things when I blacked out in New York. I’m too afraid to ask anyone else what I did; I only blacked out one other time, and that was almost 20 years ago. Like someone we both know said: you can’t regret what you don’t remember. You said you don’t trust me being around you if I’ve been drinking because you don’t know what I’ll do, because you said I let my guard down. Yet I wonder if that goes both ways… If you were afraid to be around me when YOU were drinking. We both were when you came up last year, and you were all over me. You even were when you weren’t drinking. How did we get here?
Remember how you told me you knew the exact moment your soul broke? Unfortunately, I can sympathize, because I know exactly what it feels like when that happens. It was the next-to-last time we spoke on the phone. I told you I didn’t want you to leave, and your voice took a mocking tone, and you said, “Why? Because you looooove me?” That’s when everything felt like it flipped and I was alone in the desert, or something similar. Everything just felt wrong. It still does. It’s like I’m living on the wrong side of the mirror. I watch everything that happens, but I’m confined to that one little space where everything just repeats endlessly.
The ONLY good thing that has come of this is that I’ve become a workaholic insomniac. I work from the second I wake up until the second I pass out from exhaustion. I’ve made a lot of the progress you said I’d never make. I always knew I’d do it. You were just distracting me by constantly being so mean. I’m like a shark, I guess. They can’t stop swimming, or they’ll die; I can’t stop working, because when I do, it hits me again, and that’s when I break down.
I hate this so much. I want to erase the past five months and start over. I wouldn’t have cried when you were mean to me… I was trying not to do it, but it slipped out. I’ve been in hell ever since. I’m stronger than I was before, believe it or not. This time, I wouldn’t let you be so mean; I’d call you out on it like she does. …Since that seems to be the standard to which you compare everything. I’m so angry with you for doing all of this. If everyone hadn’t gotten involved, this would’ve blown over like everything else has, and you know that just as well as I do. Despite everything, I miss my friend. You really were my best friend. No one else has bothered to step up to fill that role. No one else cares. You were always the only one who did. That’s what hurts the most, I think.
Please come back. I want my life back.
It still hurts. You’d think the raw wound would have at least started to form a scab by now, but it hasn’t. It’s so easy to be dismissed by everyone. No one knows my side because no one even bothered to ask. Not that I’d tell them everything, anyway.
Then again, maybe that would help me heal. Everything has been blown SO ridiculously out of proportion. That’s why all this has festered the way it has.
It was a stupid accident. A preventable one, but still a stupid one. We were both wrong. I apologized for my role in it. Even my therapist said it was just an unfortunate accident.
That’s it. I refuse to give it any more weight than that. I can’t. You can’t live your life based on what could have happened. …Because it didn’t happen. It never would have. No one would’ve done that to you. Especially not me.
This, though? This is killing me. I don’t have tunnel vision. I just don’t have anything else. Don’t think I haven’t looked, either. I have.
I’ve been working since I woke up at 4am. As an aside, you’d be really proud of all the stuff I’ve done. You thought I’d never do it. I never thought I wouldn’t. I’m stronger than every last one of you ever even considered.
…So for me to say this is killing me? Well… It is. There’s a lot going on right now, and I don’t have anyone to talk to about it. You were always so good at pointing out where I was over-reacting about things so I wouldn’t get in trouble at work. The stuff going on now? I really wish I could talk to you. There’s an ocean between me and everyone else.
It’s almost as wide as the one between us. Please fix it. Don’t get me wrong… I’m not some dumbass lovestruck puppy. I’m still righteously pissed at you. But friends don’t abandon each other. …Especially after almost a decade. It’s unfortunate that in today’s society, everyone’s so buzzword-happy, the instant solution is just to leave.
I swear to god, if I hear the word toxic one more time, I’m going to punch the wall. It’s chickenshit. If you have a problem, you talk about it and fix it. You don’t just run away.
Savvy?
Everyone tells me how much momentum I have going.
It’s because if I stop even for a second, the darkness creeps in and I want to end it all.
Let’s see who wins this race…
I didn’t get to tell you that last year, either.
I hope your day is wonderful and full of peace, joy, love, and friends.
I miss you sometimes. ,#
“You brought that trip on yourself. Everybody (including me) tried to talk you out of it. Not only would you be richer, you probably would still have most of your friends.”
…Thanks, Mom.
I got a notification yesterday, letting me know my phone bill was ready. I logged in and saw how many minutes I’d used over the last billing period. It was like a punch in the gut.
If people wonder why all of this has hit me so hard, and my best friend’s absence is so noticeable in my life?
This says it better than words ever could:
I am not okay. Really, really not okay. It’s getting harder and harder for me to function for an entire day without a breakdown of some sort. I do what I can to fight it off, but more and more, I’m failing.
I miss my best friend, goddammit. I haven’t heard from him in a month and a half. The phone lies silent, unless it’s a call from some random toll-free number I ignore, calling about money I can never repay.
It’s fine for everyone else, it seems. It’s nothing to them.
I was never a priority.
I don’t think I was ever a priority to my best friend, but he at least took the time to call and talk to me and see how things were going. To see if I was okay.
Even the times when he wasn’t okay and he’d get mad, he’d at least still call.
I have never felt more isolated in my entire life. I have actively reached out to my friends. Call it a cry for help, call it what you will… Someone, please just CALL me.
I’ve had a lot of bad things happen in my life. Granted, a lot of them had to do with how I responded to things that happened to me. I’ve grown a lot since then. There was only one thing different between those situations and now…
Through all of the bad; losing my career, people close to me, whatever…
I had my group of friends.
Now I feel as if I’ve lost them, too. People don’t MEAN to take sides, I’m sure… That would just be hateful. But it seems like that’s what has happened here. I was always the quiet one. The one more introverted. The outcast.
That’s all that swirls around in my head… How things were okay, and now they’re not, and it’s all my fault. I lost the person I care about the most in this world. Not because I’m some kind of obsessed weirdo, like I’m sure he made me out to be…. I just miss the one person who took the time to say hi.
Without that, it’s just me. Completely and utterly alone.
I don’t know how long I can keep doing this.
Seems like it’s getting harder and harder.
I dunno… I just think sometimes it might be easier if I wasn’t around at all.
We’ll see…