I used to hang out at the college a lot, in between classes, or just because a lot of my friends were there. I was sometimes seen as a glue that held groups of people together. One friend once looked around and saw a bunch of smiling people, talking and playing games, and called me the Patron Saint of this group, claiming that it was because of my influence that this existed at all. It was a compliment, but an overzealous one.
On a particular set of days I saw someone walking about the college by herself. I noticed her, as you do, but not in any sexually attracted sort of way, more in a sense of how she moved, walked, ignored the world around her and lived in a happy contemplation. Then this day came a long where, while sitting outside and assisting a friend with homework, quietly talking and smoking or whatever we were doing at the time, I saw her walking towards us. She was still wearing that coat that caused her to not care what was going on, but this time she was obviously coming towards us for some kind of engagement. I was thrilled. I had found myself intrigued by her for a few days, so this was a chance to meet a new friend.
There was some awkwardness at first as she was attempting to figure out how to, well, basically how to make friends. Come to find out she had just recently moved there, was young (17) at the time, and did not really know anyone at all. She came from Oregon and had later told me that she was amazed by the Central Valley because she had never seen a land so flat before.
We got to talking and right away we hit it off. We had a lot of the same tastes in music, in reading, and in movies. We talked philosophy, friends, and the world which we grew up. It was like finding your soul mate. We would clash and argue sometimes, but I like to believe that she looked up to me as an old brother. She would ask me questions, not just about the world, but about personal stuff, stuff that a parent should have taught her but didn't. Needless to say she was extremely smart for her age, but lacked some of the normal social common sense and niceties.
Later that first day, I saw her walking around town. I stopped to talk, gave her a ride to where she was living. That was a strange situation on it's own. She was staying with this person all the way across town, the other side of the tracks you might say, payed a shit ton for rent, the woman made her sleep on the couch, and refused to give her a key.
Over the next week is when we really bonded. We argued about the nobility in the action of Socrates, what a songwriter meant when choosing certain words, and which poets are better than others. It was fun, informative, stimulating, and most of, it was all done without a sense of pretentiousness or fuss. It was just good conversation. We stayed up together every day after classes talking. After only a week of knowing her, I went to give her a ride to the place she was staying. When we got there, it was cold and late. I would not leave until I knew she was inside and that night, it was not going to happen.
She banged and banged on the door, kept telling me to leave, she would just stay outside and wait for someone to come home. After awhile I just refused and told her to get in the truck. It was 2 in the morning, cold, and I was not going to let her freeze out there. I told her she is coming to stay at my house tonight, no arguing. She slept on the couch and the next morning we went back to school.
This became the norm. Giving rides and just plain being friends. She introduced me to the music of Bright Eyes, I showed her The Mountain Goats, and we would spend so many nights just talking and listening to music. We taught each other a lot of things.
Then she started falling for this guy from back home. She was going to go back up to see him soon and started asking me those questions about sex. Like I said before, she never seemed to have much in the way of common sense guidance, but a lot of good stories about her father otherwise. I remember this night because of a hilarious tangent our conversation went on when she became confused about a certain term for the woman's anatomy and my descriptions. She thought I was talking about one thing when I was talking about another and it caused some rather weird fears in her for awhile until we finally got on the same page. We laughed about that night and some hilarious imagery associated with it for many nights to come.
Soon, she was kicked out of the housing situation she was in. This caused her to become a squatter. She stayed on my couch most nights, but was always gracious and always kind. She was not a bum or a mooch by any means, but she always needed someone for a place to crash. She was in college with no place to live. All of this caused some tension between us because it got to feeling that maybe she was only my friend for a couch, maybe she only wanted to hang with me because she needed to sleep some place safe. I got frustrated with it, got somewhat cold towards her...
I feel awful for ever thinking that. It was not her nature and I was wrong to question her motives. Luckily, not long after she took that trip back home and to this guy she liked. When she got back a couple weeks later...she brought him with her. That was a bad decision, nay, a horrible decision, but they got a place to live together. That took all of the strain that I had felt and removed it. She later said that our friendship was much better and stronger after that. It meant a lot to me. She did not blame or judge me for my feelings, she understood them completely, but I still believe they were still unjustified.
Well, as time traveled, she made friends with our whole group, she made new friends and brought them into the fold, and we were always there, like a brother and sister, close as could be in that way.
Then a huge moment happened. I decided to move away. I decided that it was time, with various other things falling apart around me, to move and start a new life. I wanted so badly for her or other friends to come with me, but that was never to happen. At my going-away party we had bands and musicians play. When it was the end of my set, I sung and played her favorite song for her...she was in the crowd, singing and crying...I was crying too after seeing her and trying to finish my song. I knew what I was leaving and most of all, I was leaving my best friend in a scary world where she needed someone there...I couldn't look at her for the rest of the set. It tore my heart out and still, when I recall it today, I wish I could turn away from that image in my mind.
After I moved, we still talked over the internet and phone, but not as often. She grew tired and wary of some of the friends and normalcies of life. After a few months, she was done with that boyfriend she brought back down. He needed someplace to go. Somehow, in a weird turn of events (another story all together), he came and stayed with us. We gave him a chance, payed for him to get his GED which he failed. We got him 3 jobs, all of which he quit or got fired from in a short amount of time. This guy was a complete train wreck. The reason I talk about this is because it leads to the last part of our tale...
A couple of months after he moved up here, she came for a visit. She had a new boyfriend she wanted to tell me about, moved on in her life, and all the things that had been happening since I left. It was good, but weird because of the tension of her ex that was living with us. It all culminated in us throwing a Halloween party, alcohol, and a sexual encounter between her and her ex that should have never happened.
The next morning everything seemed good. She was leaving to go back to Merced. We dropped her off, she hugged and kissed me, and that was the last time I saw her. A couple of days later she called me to ask me to tell her ex to leave her alone and not talk to her again, which I agreed to do for her. That was fine, but that was the last I ever talked to this person that means to much to me. She never called again.
I reached out to her a few weeks later. She was not home but her roommate answered the phone. The conversation went like this:
Me: Hey is [girl]
RM: Uh, no, she is working.
Me: Oh, okay, can you have her call me later please?
RM: Uh, well, I will tell her, but she does not want to talk you.
Now, this was the first I had heard anything about this at all.
Me: What? What is going on?
RM: Well, she just told me she did not want to talk to you, but I will tell her you called and that you want to hear from her.
That was it. She did not want to talk to me. Still, years later, I don't know the exact reason for the break in contact. All I know is that I lost the best friend that I ever had. Just writing this gets me weeping because to me, she was my soul mate, or at least the closest thing I have ever known to such a title. Since that time, there have been major events in my life and when I looked over to find that friend to talk to, to alleviate my fears and work out my thoughts, she wasn't there. That was the first time I realized my isolation from the world that I knew.
Since that day I have found her on social networking sites, attempted contact a few times, but I have not heard a word in response, not even a "fuck off". That I could handle, but this silence has been about the hardest thing in my life to deal with. That fear, that unknown, it is a killer. I have recently found her once more, but I do not have the guts to reach out again. I have this extreme sense of fear that if I did, I would get the same silence and it would tear open this unhealing wound that I have learned to live with. I tell myself that if she wanted to talk to me, she could find me. I am not a hard man to find at all.
I heard some stuff through the grapevine about her, some stories, some whispers of her life. I listen intently, hoping for some clue as to what happened, but rarely do I get any good leads to work off of. One time recently I was back home, went out to a bar that a lot of my old group frequent. I saw a girl that might have been her there. My heart sped and I just could not contain myself very well. I kept looking over because I was not sure if it was her. It has been years and she was still growing and changing. After catching her eye a few times, I convinced myself that it was not her. There was no reaction at all. Mix that with the fact that I was not sold it was her in the first place, I finally settled down some.
That brings us to today where I write about pining for a friendship that I feel was stolen from me. I have a theory that she cut ties to everyone associated with her ex and me due to the influence of her boyfriend at the time. I have no real evidence of this, just suspicions from knowing him some and knowing things she said to me about him. I am saddened by this though because I thought she was smart enough to not let a guy control her life, unless, well, unless she wanted to. Maybe she did not need me anymore. This is the most heart-breaking theory because I would have thought that she loved me enough to tell me to fuck off at least.
I wish that I had more insight to add to this. I wish that I had some lesson to take, but if there is anything, it is this:
I feel that I will always be her friend. I will not let her decision to cut ties so dis respectively destroy my love for my best friend. I have told myself that if she ever comes calling again that I would treat her as I always had and be that brother to her that I liked to feel that I was. I would not treat her with scorn and possibly push her away again. This pain that I have is just a signal telling me that that I care, that she is a friend, reminding me that even though friends do some fucked up things sometimes, a true friend will always be there for you and accept you with open arms if that is what you need.
Take it or leave it. I just needed to write it down. Thanks for reading.
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