Day 09: Someone you didn't want to let go

Isn't it odd how some friendships entrench themselves in your psyche and your heart, and no matter how you try to let go, you find you can't?

I had a friend - a really good friend, or so I thought. We were friends all the way through high school. Then we got to varsity, and suddenly, everything changed. While I tried to maintain our friendship, I felt that it was all one-sided. To me it felt like her new friends were more important, and that she had little time for me. I tried not to get upset about it, because, after all, people grow up and grow away and our circumstances had changed, and blah, blah, blah. But it didn't work. In my heart of hearts, I was devastated.

Then we moved overseas, and although I still tried to keep in touch through email, I heard never a word from her. Now I know that some people are not good at correspondence. And she clearly is one of those. But it felt like yet another nail in the coffin. It seemed obvious to me that she didn't want to be my friend, and that hurt like hell. I then vowed not to care about it, but to just let it go.

If I'd been able, in university, to just let go, then all would have been fine. But I couldn't. Instead, our friendship just drifted, and that hurt more, I think, than a sudden, final cataclysmic ending would have done. It felt more like a festering wound than a clean surgery.

Now we're back in Cape Town, I see her around from time to time. And every time, without fail, the old hurts resurface. Outwardly I manage to be civil, I manage to be friendly, I manage to take a polite interest in her life, but inwardly... inwardly it breaks me all over again.