Over the years, I’ve come to lose quite a few close friends. Some of them ended in one of those big fights, the ones neither of us could ever really come back from. Others had ended one random day after we both simply stopped putting in the effort and overtime, we grew apart. And worst of all, some of them ended when just one person decided to leave without saying anything. No closure. No goodbyes. No resolutions.
What No One Else Saw
I’ve always been afraid of being vulnerable with my friends. It always felt like a risk too high to take because if one day we weren’t friends anymore, it would mean I’d left an important piece of myself out in the world, unprotected. So naturally, I closed myself off emotionally and let myself hurt in secret.
Ever since I was young, I was the type to be hurt often and easily by things people would say. As a result unbeknownst to them, my friends and family had a lot of power to hurt me. I’ve spent too many hours crying until my voice was hoarse and my eyes were swollen. I did it that time in Canada, in the back of some stranger’s car, after a “friend” had cussed me out. I did it again last week, a block down the road from the house where my mom’s brother proudly repeated the f slur. And I did it just two days ago, three and a half hours from home, with the new found realization that the friends I thought I’d had, really weren’t my friends at all.
The Art of Forgiveness and Forgetting
No matter how many times my friends and family had hurt me, I had always come back to them as if nothing had ever happened and pretend I was okay. I figured having a difficult relationship with them was better than a life without them. I figured at the end of the day, I was the only one who got hurt – I could just forgive them and forget anything had ever happened. But even with all my efforts, these people still continue to hurt me to this day. And some other people have decided to not be apart of my life anymore over a conflict they’d never even bothered to communicate. If all these people can put themselves first, why, why, why have I been so okay with putting myself second to all of them? How was I ever okay with forgiving people who had slept peacefully at the end of the day after deliberately hurting me? For the first time in my life, I’m going to put myself first. This week, it meant letting go of a thirteen year friendship that has caused me lots of pain, it meant severing ties with someone who was once my family, and it meant breaking down my fantasy to look at my “friends” for who they really are. For the first time in my life, I’m making the choice to not forgive you.
The End
The closing of this chapter on my life isn’t quite how I imagined it would play out. But life certainly won’t always be perfect and maybe one day at the end of my story it will be a painless fond memory.
Thank you for reading!
Signing off,
pandaxduckie
Weekly Review
Korean Drama –
Melo Movie [멜로무비] (8/10)
Chinese Drama –
The First Frost (10/10)
New Restaurants –
The Daily Catch Brookline (5/10)
Paris Creperie (10/10)
Repeat – Ruth Bader Cinnaburg, Blueberry Soda
Not Again – Berrie Antoinette, Stark Chocolate, Matcha Latte
Source Restaurant (8/10)
Repeat – 3 Topping Pizza
