Dimples on the Edge

What do you do when someone you care so deeply about reveals that they have been unhappy in your shared relationship for months? When they state that they don’t like who you are and no longer want to be around you?

Completely blindsided, you apologize profusely and earnestly, seek to take accountability and beseech them to believe you and remain in the friendship. Your whole world, your entire perception of self, has been knocked completely off-kilter. Afterwards, you review hundreds of texts sent, searching for any inkling of an indication that your friend had checked out.

This person, that you love wholly, now recoils from you and finds no joy in your presence. The texts though, the texts. They give no indication. The behavior they exhibited prior to this confrontation seems to be full of love and care. You were thoroughly bamboozled, a fool in their eyes.

You find out they have been harboring disgust towards you regarding events that occurred years ago. Events where they blamed you for abandoning them in their hour of need, without acknowledging that you flew out to be with them twice, when they never once even offered to show up for either of your parents deaths. People they actually knew, unlike their partner you never met, and still showed up to mourn.

You finally see that your style of forgiveness in friendship, of moving past and releasing hurt during times when you know your friend was going through a big change in their life, doesn’t align with them. To bring up your hurt now though, would only be viewed as petty and futile.

In the closing moments of the call, your former friend gives you the speech you know they have given former partners. You roil, but remain calm, despite the cruelty of them acting as if they are doing you a favor, encouraging you to stay in touch with their family and that the friend will always be there for you if times get tough. As if you have no pride, and would ever reach out to someone in hardship that spit in your face. They accuse you of not understanding vocabulary, a snide remark intended to hurt.

They make a poor attempt to lighten the mood, and show gratitude that you weren’t a “fake ass bitch”. You’re dumbfounded. The only one that has been fake throughout the revelations that have been brought to light is them.

It doesn’t matter though. You are the villain in their story. Years of friendship and support forgotten, instead replaced with a few incidents that weren’t addressed in the moment, allowing them to fester, unbeknownst to you. The grace you thought you would be given as a friend, never offered.

You were a fool. A fool all along.