well, this was unexpected

I don't know how to start off this post without sounding like I am using this blog as a sounding board for all of my not-dealt-with bullshit but I'm pretty sure that's what this year is all about anyway. Not dealing with anything and then sometimes feeling like I should deal with little things that probably have a lot to do with the big picture. I'm sure that explanation makes no sense whatsoever but does anything I do? Let's be honest here.

Maybe on my road to being able to not need anything, I learned to block things out until I feel like feeling about them. Generally speaking, I can forget I feel anything for quite some time until I make myself remember again. Possibly the ultimate defense mechanism? Possibly a present to myself after all those ridiculous teenage years of feeling EVERYTHING so vividly and passionately? Who knows. I just know I do this now.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about *L. *L and I had a pretty curious relationship from the time I was nineteen up until last year. We were ultimately best friends who would fall in and out of love with each other randomly, violently and most of the time, stupidly. We were there for each other when we were both at our worst and there was no one I trusted more. And I knew he felt the same way about me. I never once doubted it.

We'd use each other in the most ridiculous of ways. When we were in relationships with other people - we'd almost beg each other to sabotage it. There was never any reason. We both had fallen in love with other people intermittently throughout our friendship yet would always somehow be giggling behind their backs. It didn't seem malicious at the time because we were best friends and that's how it had always been. I didn't know any better or at least pretended that I didn't.

In between all this we were always fighting. He was always blaming me for leaving the south and I was always blaming him for not coming after me. It was a co-dependent relationship that even though I am a relatively smart girl, it never dawned on me what it meant until it was too late.

One day *L went off to join the army and came back the man I always wished he was. I didn't understand our dynamic anymore and he came back with a girlfriend.

This time I felt different. It hit me like a ton of bricks that I had always loved him. I had to fall in love with other people to find out and we had to get to this place to finally have it all work.

When I told him, he blamed me for leaving him years ago. He blamed me for making him watch me fall in love with someone else. He felt victorious because I now knew how he felt about me before. Before what? Before the army? Before this girl? Before I actually grew up and stopped playing games? What?

I knew after that nothing could ever be the same. They say it in movies all the time and it's all dramatic and silly but this was the truth. There was a tangible shift in our entire timeline and no matter what - there was no going back and I genuinely didn't want to.

There were a lot of things he told me and I never once had a reason to not believe him. We had never once lied to each other even when it hurt.

Around that time *M relapsed. Obviously, I needed my best friend and the one person in the world who I wouldn't fear crying with and telling him exactly how I felt. Our communication had been sparse in the few months leading up the relapse because I was trying to give him his space to figure out his next move. I never got a response to my own text - instead I got:

I'm engaged.

I've never dropped a phone before but I smashed it all over the back room of my work. I felt sick. For all the years I thought I had the upper hand and it ended with a text message that made me stop believing in "the normal course of things." I won't use a cliche word like fate and cheapen the experience - but I'm sure you can picture it.

I panicked and called my girlfriends who were mortified for me and also advised me to delete him out of my life. I knew I should. I knew I had just heard another huge blow of information after, you know, my brother relapsing from cancer. But I couldn't. Not until I decided. Until I made it my decision.

I had to come to terms with the fact that I would always have the impulse to call him when someone said something funny or to tell him a juicy story. Strangely, it didn't take too long to figure out that I was worth more than those impulses and I could tell someone else, goddamnit. And I did. I deleted him from every social network I could and deleted his phone number from my phone so I couldn't cave and call him when the tequila got to me.

I got a lot of calls, messages and texts from him after that. I didn't listen to them or read them which is unlike me. I usually like to torture myself a little bit. The last call came from the last week of *M's life when he was on hospice. My Mom saw the caller ID before I did and I saw the sadness in her eyes for me. As her son was dying. And I knew I had to end this once and for all.

So I did.

Please leave me alone.

And that was it. 5 years like it never existed.

I miss him every day. And I want him to be happy every day. I love him enough to know we can't be in each other's lives without intentionally or unintentionally stealing too many pieces of each other. It doesn't make it easier when I stumble (*ahem* yeah right) on a picture of him with his pretty wife in front of their pretty house. But in the same breath I look at them and realize that that wouldn't have been us anyway. And somehow, depending on how I chose to feel that day - it makes me feel a little bit better.