I’ve always known that holding a grudge only hurts you. When you stay mad at someone, that anger really only takes life away from you, but simply knowing that doesn’t make it any easier to act on. In high school, I encountered many challenges: drama, jealousy, and even the loss of friendship. After my senior year, I lost one of my closest friends, and I found myself clinging to our friendship and our memories. I held on to anger and jealousy. I’m still holding on, like keeping the friendship close might somehow fix it; like the fact that my feelings haven’t disappeared must mean something.
Could this attachment be a good thing? To love someone so deeply that you can’t let go of the good or even the bad? I feel anxiety and nervousness even returning to my hometown because our memories live everywhere here, and I am scared of facing those, facing her. I replay what happened over and over again, as if thinking about it might change something.
Maybe the friendship itself hurt more than the ending. Maybe letting go of it feels like letting go of a part of myself;I’m not ready to let go, but I know I should be. I feel like I’m spiraling.
I saw her in public the other day, like strangers carrying so much anger and love for each other. I can’t believe there was a time when I knew everything about her, and suddenly it was like a switch flipped. It just stopped. No closure. No real ending.
Maybe that was the least painful way it could have ended. But was it? Can she even understand how much pain she caused me? My mom tells me that she’s not losing sleep over this, that she’s not overthinking it like I am. But that thought still sticks: what if she is? What if she’s waiting for me to reach out? I can’t even reach out; I am blocked on every social media platform, a quiet reminder of how carefully she manages the image she shows to the world.
But what if she’s not waiting? What if she’s completely over it? How could she be? And even if she isn’t, could we ever reach a point of civility? With people from my hometown, it always seems like they either love you or hate you. I don’t want a best friendship again; after everything that happened, I don’t even think that’s possible, nor do I want it to be. But I do wish we could reach a place of simple cordiality - to be able to smile politely, to pass each other without tension, to exist in the same place without fear. I wish I didn’t feel scared to come home because she’s still talking about me, keeping my name in conversations I never asked to be part of, long after our friendship ended.
Sometimes I think it would be easier to move away, to escape the memories, the people who disregard me now because of what she said and the power she holds over them, and the
places that remind me of what I once went through. I’m angry and hurt for what she did, for how she didn’t listen, for how she took the word of a person she unfriended over mine. I’m angry and hurt by how she handled the situation after it unfolded and the lengths she went to turn people against me. I’m angry at her friends. I’m angry and hurt that I can’t know her anymore, that I can’t show her my pictures from college, or have long talks about our lives.
I want to leave here and never look back. But how would that fix anything? How would disappearing teach me how to face things like this? How could I ever learn from it if I can’t even stay?
People say these things take time, but how much time? I’ve heard it takes half the length of the friendship to get over it. Do I really have to wait nine years? For eighteen years, I’ve known her. For eighteen years, we have had some kind of relationship. For eighteen years, we promised we’d stand in each other’s weddings. So how do you move on from someone you’ve known for so long, someone you loved so deeply?
Maybe the answer isn’t about forgetting or forcing myself to “get over it”. Maybe it’s learning to live with the ache, without letting it define me. Maybe it’s accepting that love can change shape, that people can grow apart, and that sometimes the most painful endings teach us the most about who we are.
I don’t have closure from her, but I’m beginning to realize I can give closure to myself. I can honor what we had without holding myself hostage to it. I can carry the good, learn from the hurt, and still keep moving forward, knowing that I am proud of myself for how I handled that situation.
Maybe moving on doesn’t mean letting go of her, it means choosing not to lose myself and living in the love we did share and the love I am capable of giving and receiving.
And maybe, deep down, somewhere in her heart, she’s holding a grudge or still holding on to what we shared. Maybe she does know the kind of person I am - the kind of person I showed her throughout our friendship. Maybe she will read this and take a true moment to think. Maybe she thinks it was a mistake… or maybe not - I’m not going to lose sleep over it anymore.
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