Though at the time I didn't notice, my life is much happier without her.
I met her in 8th grade, we had science together. She had the ability to make me smile like no one I had ever met. Before I even knew it, days had gone by of us laughing together. Weeks full of rich memories I now wish I could forget. I remember when covid first started, in early 2020, our teacher had us do a project of tracking where it was spreading and write a short paper on how it was affecting some people. Very quickly after, my final year of middle school was cut in half. That however did not stop our friendship. We would call and play games pretty much every day and night.
More months passed, more laughs were shared and more memories were made. And just like that, we entered High School together, even though our first day was pretty much just us opening our Chromebooks and staring at a screen. She still had the ability to make it fun.
When winter came along she started to talk to this boy. I would always ask her “bro, do you like him?” or “why aren’t you two just dating already?”. When they started getting closer I could see myself getting farther away from her. Then one day she finally gave me a different answer from the usual shoulder shrug. She told me that they were dating. This made me sad and I didn’t know why because I was happy that she met such a nice boy. And instead of calling every night, I was alone crying. It took me a while to realize why I cared so much about her dating this boy. Funny thing I realized why I was feeling this way while listening to “Heather” by Conan Gray. I wished I was him. I wanted her to like me.
When I finally realized my feelings for her, I mean I obviously couldn’t say anything because I saw that she was happy and I wouldn't want to mess things up for her. We would still call and laugh but there would always come a time she would say “It’s getting late, I’m gonna go so I can call him.” Even if I did say something I thought she would just be weirded out because I am pretty sure that she didn’t like girls like that. Later, I had found a way to cope, which was to laugh at the boy and make fun of things they would say when they were together.
Things went on like this for a while and for a long time she would laugh at the jokes too because she knew I wasn’t serious. My feelings started to fade when I met another girl that had the same ability to make me laugh as she did. However, I still made the jokes because I thought she liked them. Soon later we entered our Sophomore year of High School. I had started to notice that she was distancing herself away from me more. My texts started to go on delivered and never be read and she stopped answering my calls. Some weekends she wouldn’t talk to me at all. The whole time I just wanted to know what was going on.
She started hanging out with our friends without me. After that things started to get rough for me and I kept getting these really bad thoughts of doing things to myself that I know I would regret and that would just hurt me more.
We finally talked she told me that the jokes did upset her because that boy was the only person she felt that she could talk to about deep stuff. I did start to feel bad but I wanted to know why she didn't talk to me about stuff like that. She continued to go on and say that I made our friends about me and that I never cared about how she felt. This made me so mad because the whole time she wasn’t talking to me I just wanted to know if she was okay. And how am I supposed to know these things if she didn’t want to talk to me about that stuff? I know I sound selfish when I say this but it was just unfair.
Looking back I feel like I should have never told those jokes. But how much would that have helped? I mean I would have still liked her and I would still have to watch my best friend slowly fade away from me. With months passed with us no longer in contact with each other, I don’t regret not being friends anymore. Knowing why she wasn’t talking to me rather than her ignoring me made me happier. It took me a while to get over it but I haven't cried over a friendship since her. So, I do think my life is better without her.