I’m not sure about anyone else, but for me, 2022 has been quite the year. I’ve been happy, devastated, heartbroken, and so many other emotions. I feel that this year forced me to mature as a person in ways I never thought that I’d expect. I moved away from toxic places that were no longer serving me and had to let go of some people — some I never thought that I’d ever let go of, and this opened my eyes the most.
I was talking to my best friend the other day. This past year I learned a lot about a friend who I thought would always be there for me. This friend broke my heart in a way that no other person could.
To make a long story short, we’d been friends for a couple years (she was a friend from high school) and there was a miscommunication between us. I voiced how I felt, and I was ignored and “given space.” Meanwhile, the person never communicated with me about the situation, and then in turn created tension that didn’t need to be there in the first place.
We spoke and tried to make amends, then my friend proceeded to not speak with me for two weeks following that. She came off as cold, bitchy, and honestly made me wonder how we were so close in the first place.
While she did end up speaking to me again, things never went back to how they were in the beginning. Now, I haven’t spoken to this friend in almost six months, and she has not reached out once to me. I moved on and had amazing things happen to me, things that I know she knew about, and I haven’t heard anything from her. Nothing, not a word.
If you care about someone and you hear they are going places, how do you not say anything? How do you let them sit there thinking that you don’t care?
I’m sure you’re probably thinking “well, why don’t you reach out? It’s a two-way street.” But that’s what made shit hit the fan in the first place. She ignored me. Only now, this time it’s different, because I’m sick of it. I’m always the one to reach out, I’m always the one that wants to make plans. Yet I’m the one that gets ignored. So why would I continue to embarrass myself here?
Like I said, we’re going on six months of not speaking to each other. My best friend has been listening to me go on and on about how angry the situation has made me, how betrayed I feel by this person, and I just don’t understand how I could be so pissed about the situation still.
And then it hit me.
I’m not mad about the situation, and I’m not mad at the friend anymore. I genuinely hold no bad feelings toward her. I am, however, still mad about how she handled the situation.
I was the honest one, I opened my mouth about how I felt, and she made herself the victim. I was the bad guy because I was stating my feelings. And then she didn’t talk to me for two weeks. Meanwhile, she was the reason why this all happened. I’m not allowed to be upset, I’m not allowed to come across as mad, but she can go two weeks without talking to me because of something that she started. That makes sense, right?
I think that if my friend had handled the situation in a more mature, kind way, we would probably still be close. She would probably still be the person that I’ve always thought of her to be, and she probably would have been the first person I told my good news to when it happened. I genuinely thought she was going to be the maid of honor at my wedding one day. But instead, I’m here writing this and wishing it wasn’t about her.
But now my eyes are open and my heart is trying to heal itself. I think it’s best that we stopped speaking, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still sting to not see her name pop up on my phone or social media.
When you handle a situation with someone, think before you speak and before you act. Sometimes that knee-jerk reaction isn’t what you’re supposed to do immediately. Listen to the other person and understand where they’re coming from. You might save a friendship if you do that first.
Photo by Kristijan Arsov on Unsplash
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