from nowhere

it really feels like this came out of nowhere, this sudden anger at an old friend of mine. he stopped being my friend while we were in college, when he felt that i was not being a friend to him. the problem is, he was right. i was not there for him when he needed me, and i took and still take full responsibility for that, and know i caused him an unbearable amount of pain when he most needed me. i felt bereft when we stopped being friends, devestated that such a friend-of-the-heart would be lost to me forever. i tried over the years to make contact with him but he didn’t seem to want to hear from me. i’ve offered him heart-felt apologies, but he doesn’t want them.

but now, suddenly, i am filled with anger. maybe it’s the stages of grief. i don’t know.

i feel angry and hurt that he didn’t understand that when things fell apart, it was one of the worst years i had lived through. i was struggling in school, i felt lost and at odds with my beliefs and morals, i had made a horrendous mistake in my personal relationship that i still consider my great regret to date, i was under extreme financial stress about the cost of school & housing, i was being used by my roommate as an emotional dumping ground (and i was too naive at the time to understand the situation and get out of it), my family was going through some of the worst times we had been through, my mom had just given away our family dog, and i just couldn’t do anything right, get anything right. the only thing i had been confident about, which was being “smart”, i had lost. i felt like i had no one, and could no longer stand under my own stress and grief. in my lost state, i got involved in a situation that i believed was vacant of emotion on both sides, but i was wrong, because i’m not built that way, no matter what i tried to believe. in the midst of this, i was so ashamed of my mistakes and inability to cope that i stopped corresponding with my friend. i wrote him brief responses to his emails, telling him i was running off and that i’ll write him more later. later just never happened because i could never get my thoughts together enough, could never put to words the idiocy i was engaging in in every aspect of my life. i felt like such a … loser that i couldn’t face myself or him.

and i understand how it must have been from his side. he poured himself out to me, just as i used to to him, and he was in unfamiliar and stressful circumstances too, and i appeared to be shrugging him off, not just once, but over and over again.

so, i lost him.

where does this anger come from? it’s not fair, i think i know that. but i’m angry that he didn’t understand my pain and confusion and my inability to be his anchor. i also needed an anchor. neither of us could be that for each other, because we were both so lost. but he’s the one that walked away from the closest friendship either of us had ever had, and i was the one that got left behind. and that’s why i’m angry. because i was a shitty friend to him, and in return, he was a shitty friend to me, when we both needed it most. isn’t that really stupid of me to be angry at him about that? but there it is. it was the most unencumbered, simple, yet complete friendship i had ever had with anyone, and it was gone.

so, i am angry.

i’m sure this feeling will pass in a matter of hours, and i’ll be able to see my foolishness clearly. i see it now, but it’s a bit hazy.

it’s likely that over time, the simple, unencumbered friendship would have deteriorated by itself. nothing can be too simple for too long, i think. all my other important relationship are complex — seppo and i have a complex relationship, and he’s the most important person in the world to me, even beyond my blood relatives. my mom and i have a complex relationship, but it’s undeniable that i love her and will love her until the day i die.

maybe it’s that i miss the simplicity of it because friends don’t have to figure out the things that family and life partners have to figure out. but people are wrong when they say men & women (or people in the “attractive gender pool”) can’t be friends. because we were friends. maybe it’s because we were kids, really, and not really a man and a woman. it just wasn’t that way between us.