Five years ago I let go of what was once the healthiest friendship I thought I ever had. I let go of this connection because I couldn’t return his feelings for me.
He was in love with me but when I gave a relationship with him a shot I couldn’t pull my feelings together for him, and I didn’t know why. I kept trying to force myself to feel as deeply as he did because he was a good guy who treated me well.
I made promises for our future I couldn’t keep and tried for six years to fall in love with him. I really really tried but those feelings would only surface for other men, never for him.
It was something I just could not understand because I thought good people were supposed to end up together but I was wasting both of our time trying to figure out the reason, and find the feeling.
I couldn’t put his life on hold like that
So, I let him go.
I didn’t want him to live his life waiting for me. In the end, I ended up telling him the truth. I couldn’t be what he needed from me and I couldn’t seem to fall in love with him the way I wanted to, the way he was in love with me.
It ended badly, understandably, and I spent the next five years in deep regret and grief over this loss that I was responsible for. But this past June, I was put in touch with this man whose heart I broke all those years ago.
I wrote about our reunion and why it didn’t work out in a previous article about the second chance I got with the one that got away.
But there was something I left out.
Something that was finally able to give me the closure I really needed to let him, and my own guilt, go. Something that made me feel justified in my decision so many years ago. Something so disturbing…
It needed its own moment.
…
Things started out great
It was initially awkward but the ice was soon broken
I believe it was divine timing because we rekindled our connection on the very same day we met eleven years ago, June 28th.
I believe this happened to give me the closure I needed because I had been letting this guilt eat away at me for several years, getting into drugs to escape the loss, and trying to find him in other people.
We remembered old times and admitted how much we had missed one another. I told him all the words I had never said and he seemed receptive to my apologies. We even admitted we still loved one another.
We spoke for five hours and he was so open to me being in his life that he told me to save his number. So I did. He was at work so he walked home as we talked and then when he got home.
…
It started with a TikTok video
Photo by Alexander Shatov on Unsplash
And just like that one bad joke put the final nail in our coffin
I asked him if he was on Instagram and he said he was and that he was also on TikTok but only uses it to watch funny videos.
When I asked what kind he told me he loved dark humor and proceeded to tell me about a TikTok video in particular that he found hilarious.
The TikTok was captioned something like, “when you go over to your emo friend’s house” and proceeded to show a guy walking into his friend’s bedroom, where the lights were off.
As they went to turn the lights on the ceiling fan started and all you could hear was a choking noise, along with a body hitting the wall as it started spinning (along with the fan). Indicating that a suicide attempt is in progress.
And he started laughing, hysterically.
I don’t have TikTok and I’ve never run across this clip so I was shocked when he described it to me. I was mortified and I was frozen.
At nineteen, I lost a friend the same way.
Her name was Kimmy
Kimmy was in an abusive relationship and it got to be too much. So, one morning, she hung herself while her mom was out doing their laundry. Her mom was the one who found her.
The rest of us who had gone to high school with her found out right after. I was in Spanish class when I got the text. He and I were friends at this point, he knew about this. I left class and he left with me, to comfort me.
I went to her wake and her funeral.
I still remember the rope marks on her body, and how they tried to dress her up in a way that would hide it as much as possible.
It has been the only time, so far, in my life, I’ve gone to a funeral for someone so young — as young as me. She was also nineteen and she was one of the kindest people I knew.
The thing is we weren’t really that close.
She was someone who was kind to me at random and every time we interacted she showed me warmth, kindness, and love. She was just that kind of person. She could touch your heart from a distance.
Regardless though, even if this had never happened there is still absolutely nothing funny about someone attempting to take their life, at all.
And it was the fact that he found it not only funny but hysterical, that spoke volumes about his character. I knew I wouldn’t be seeing him on Saturday.
I didn’t want to meet this man.
…
The man I loved didn’t exist anymore
That version of him I held onto in my head wasn’t him anymore
It didn’t exist anymore. It was only for that time and place. There were very few subtle signs that predicted that who he is now is who he’s always been,
And would further become.
He just loved me so much that he set much of those characteristics to the side, but there were glimpses.
Mask slips that are too uncomfortable to discuss right now but I ignored them all because I refused to believe them when they showed up. The one thing that should have been enough to tip me off was the friends he had.
They were not the kind of men I’d ever want to associate myself with in any capacity and it always lingered in the back of my mind, how could he be friends with men like that when he was so different?
But the truth is he wasn’t
Birds of a feather do flock together.
Some aspect of him was like that. I was just choosing not to accept it because to me he was perfect, but the truth is if he was always going to fully embody this person he is right now,
Then he was only ever an idea.
Considering how judgemental, materialistic and cruel he has become, he isn’t the kind of man I could love now anyway. And he was no longer the man I loved. But I only know this because we were given a second chance to experience one another.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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