Clarence

I mentioned a while ago that I was going to do my best to start focusing on the good friendships that are still left in my life.

To that end, I need to take a moment to mention Clarence.

Since I graduated a year and a half ago, I have seen Clarence in person one time for about 30 minutes. It doesn't matter. He is still one of my best friends. And I can't take credit for it at all.

Clarence has been the best. He texts me random jokes every couple of weeks and then we'll have a bizarre text message conversation for the rest of the day. Sometimes I am the one to text first, but I am so thankful for how often he takes the initiative because of how much I suck at remembering to text people. I might see something that reminds me of Clarence and think "oh! I should text him!" and then just not.

So I'm thankful for Clarence because he has put in the effort necessary for us to remain friends despite living so far from each other. And I'm thankful for Clarence because he has heard some of the stories on here and he hasn't offered meaningless tropes, but has just listened.

So, Clarence, thanks.

I really appreciate you.

Mending

Lately I've been attempting to rebuild some bridges. I've decided not to let all of these stories be over. There are some friends that I've lost and people that have hurt me. I've confronted some of them lately, letting them know that they hurt me (I guess in some cases people can be dense enough to not realize it). It's been a good practice.

The reality is, the situation with Chip has been emotionally draining. I guess I'm trying to spend some time working on friendships. Also, as emotionally drained as I've been, I give a whole lot less of a shit about what people think. So now is a good time for confronting people.

But I guess what I wanted to say is that my life and my friends are not all bad. In fact, I have a lot of friends who are typically better friends to me than I am to them. I really fail as a friend sometimes. And I'm so glad for that. Not that I'm a bad friend. But I'm glad that there are people that care about me enough to be my friend even though I'm not very good at it (as evidenced by the previous stories).

Chip is my last story of friends that have left me behind.

But I have some stories about friends that haven't. Friends that are the best. These are the stories I'm going to focus on.

Chip, Part 3

I hate this.

I hate this so much.

But I think I also need this, in a way.

I went to visit Chip and all of my other friends about six months after graduation. It was great. I got to spend a lot of time with Chip, and it was kind of like I hadn't left. At one point, though, I told Chip that I felt bad because he didn't tell me much about his life. I felt as though he wasn't trusting him with the things that were bothering him. He told me that he did, but just didn't feel like he was going through anything that important.

I hate what I did. I immediately accepted his answer, and I moved on to something that had been bothering me. Chip had broken up with his girlfriend just a couple of weeks prior. Granted, what I was going through at the time was tough. But I should have tried harder to talk with him about it. I should have pushed harder for him to let me in. But I didn't. And I think that was a mistake.

Soon after I left, I had a really bad day. Chip and I had a mutual friend who was being completely awful. I called Chip, and he gave me some of the best advice I've ever gotten. He also told me that if I ever needed to talk, all I had to do was let him know, and he would drop everything to help me out.

And this is when one of the worst periods of my life began (to be clear, I am not referring to the worst menstrual period ever, which would also be awful).

Two days after my conversation with Chip, I needed to talk. So I texted him. ... Twice ... Thrice ... And I emailed him. And I didn't hear back from him. So I told him he was acting like an asshole. Which was possibly an overstatement, but when I was used to getting responses right away, a week was far too long to wait when I really needed to talk.

He finally responded. And he was mad. At me. He told me he had been busy.

And I apologized. And I said that I still needed to talk to him.

And he didn't respond.

At some point, this became more about my just needing to talk to Chip than about what I had originally wanted to talk about with him.

And this went on for some three or four weeks. I would text him or email him and say that I wanted to talk. He would sometimes respond, and sometimes not. He told me that he would get back to me as soon as he could. I would see updates on his facebook during time that could've been spent getting back to me.

I thought he hated me.

Finally, finally, FINALLY, I got him on the phone. And we talked. For a long time. He offered no real explanation. But he apologized. And he said he wouldn't let it happen again. And I said I wanted to forgive him, and I wanted to learn to trust him again. I said I wanted our friendship to be the way it always had been. He said he wanted that, too.

For my own catharsis in this situation, I felt as though I needed Chip to really understand what had been going through my head during these weeks. So I told him I was going to send him some stuff that I had written in some of the worst moments. He said that was ok. So I sent it.

And he was great. He responded so quickly, saying he had read everything and that he would respond when he had more time.

And I waited.

And waited.

Finally, I asked him again to respond.

And then I gave up on him responding and just asked him to not make promises he didn't plan on keeping.

And I waited some more.

And then I asked him if he still wanted to be friends with me.

And then I waited some more.

I ended up waiting three and a half months.

In that time, I went a little ballistic. I texted Chip, I called him, I emailed him. All asking why. I just had to know why.

And finally, after three and a half months, I found out why.

The first thing he told me is that he had been trying for a long time to figure out how to say what he had to say to me. In fact, he had been "going crazy." Wow, you were going crazy, Chip? I'm so sorry! If I had known I would've stopped being such a relentless bitch who wanted to hear two words from her best friend!

Pah.

And so Chip told me about he had been attracted to me for two fucking years. He said that he had sworn he would never tell me because it would make our friendship too complicated.

Oh I still cannot believe this. He determined unequivocally that our friendship would be less complicated if he never spoke to me again than if he told me how he felt.

He told me that he was not good at confrontation (really?). He told me that he had been avoiding me some all those months ago, because it was too hard for him to keep this from me. And he told me that when I sent him those things I had written, he had spiraled a little bit and he couldn't bear having hurt me. In his addled brain, it made more sense to never talk to me again.

And then he told me that he needed to get over me, and maybe eventually we can be friends again.

Oh, this was so great. I was pissed, but I was so glad to be talking with him again. And I thought that it was going to work out. I thought we could have a conversation and then he would take a break from me. And I thought that I would have a chance to get my questions answered before he disappeared again. And I thought that I would be friends with him again someday.

And I thought wrong. I was so, so wrong.

I responded to Chip's message. And he didn't do me the courtesy of even saying he was through. I gave up on an honest response to the things I had said and just asked if I should ever expect to hear from him again. Finally, when I knew I was going to be back in town, I asked him if we could meet.

He didn't respond. He never responded.

And so I ambushed him. I still feel bad about this. But I knew that I needed to see him again if I was ever, ever going to get over this pile of shit he had left on my doorstep.

The first thing he said when he saw me was "hey, how's it going?"

And I fucking lost it.

And I yelled at him a little bit. And I cried a lot.

And he said "this is what I was afraid of," and went back inside.

That just might have been the most heartbreaking moment of my life. I had experimented with the idea of having feelings for Chip for much of our friendship, off and on. At this moment, I don't know how I felt about Chip. What I knew, though, was that no person I had ever been in any kind of relationship with (whether romantic or not) had ever devastated me as much as he did in that moment.

And so I stood there. And I tried to collect myself. And then I knocked on his door and I handed him a note that I had written before I went there. I apologized for calling him mean things. I vaguely heard him saying something back to me. And I left.

The note I had given him basically said that he had hurt me a lot and that he was being a fool. It said that I was angry with him for not being humane enough to give me a semblance of closure. And it said that he would miss me.

And he will.

I know that I have missed so many important connections and conversations in this story. I know that it hasn't exactly been well written. And I know I'm leaving out things that could change the way anyone might see it. But going over even the little that I have has tortured me. But I knew I had to do it. I had to because I can never forget the way Chip treated me. Because I know that if he is at all the person that he used to be that he misses me. But I also know that I miss him more than anyone I can ever remember being apart from in my life. And I need to remember how he has hurt me, because if I don't, I'm going to spend way too much of my life wishing he was still in it.

Chip. Chip was a dick.

Chip, Part 2

My summer was not adventurous. Really, not in the least. But I kept Chip informed to some extent and we mainly just chatted over the summer.

Soon after I returned for school, we started hanging out some. I included him in some of the stuff I was doing with some of my friends. He didn't have a car, but he lived really close to another friend of mine, so I would often pick him up and we would go hang out with this other friend. Our friendship started getting closer at work as well.

He was pretty shy, but he would initiate conversations with me (which he didn't do all that often before), and we had a crapload of inside jokes. We made each other laugh all of the time. I don't think I can overstate how well I got along with Chip.

It did not take long for both of us to consider the other their best friend at work. It also did not take long for us to start speaking to each other about things that were more important than inside jokes and small talk.

The reality is, though, while Chip was a great listener, he didn't open up much about himself. I took note at some points and encouraged him at others. I really do believe that he trusted me, and he did open up to me some. He told me once or twice that he trusted me, but he really didn't have all that much going on that he needed to talk about.

But Chip was the best. He was truly one of the best friends I have ever had. This was my senior year, and I eventually graduated. This is the majority of when things started to get somewhat weird.

Chip and I texted back and forth pretty frequently after I moved back home. It was some of the things that we were saying, though, that I remember. Chip paid me so many compliments. So many. Not like "You're sexy," compliments. More like "You can do this because you kick ass." He once told me I was his best friend. And he once told me that we would always be friends because I was too awesome for anything to happen to our friendship. I loved these things that he was saying.

I wish that they had all been true.

Chip

There is one story (Ned) that I'm probably going to skip, because the whole situation is still so in flux that I don't really think it's even close to over. Suffice it to say that Ned cheated on his girlfriend, a close friend of mine, and he is at this point trying to get his life back on track. Whether or not Ned and I will be able to be friends in the future is unsure. 

So I'm going to talk about Chip. 

This ... This might just be the worst of them all. 

Certainly the most dramatic. 

And the most fresh. 

I met Chip at an internship nearing three years ago. He was a staff member at the nonprofit I was interning at for school. I held the internship for two semesters and then I volunteered there another semester until I graduated. So I saw Chip at least twice a week at work for about a year and a half. I really enjoyed working there. It was a lot of fun. The best part was how close I got with some of my coworkers. We would spend a lot of time joking around with each other and being sarcastic. There came a point when I actually looked forward to the week more than I did to the weekend. It was insane. 

Chip was one of the coworkers I got close with. He and one other guy (and I) were definitely the three that spent the most time joking around together. The great thing was that we were working with kids, and it was an extremely fun environment the whole time, so the joking around lasted pretty much the entire time we were at work. 

But we could be serious too. Some of the kids we worked with were in pretty bad spots. We discussed these things, and how best we could serve them, and how difficult it was. And then we would move past it and start joking again. We were each others' support system for the difficult parts of the job. 

At the end of my first semester working there, I took a three hour trip with three coworkers to see a baseball game. And a three hour trip back. This is the first half of how Chip and I became friends outside of work. 

Obviously, there was a lot of time for chatting with six hours in the car. We did some more joking around. We also talked about serious things. Chip mentioned how he tends to have bad days on Fridays because of an associated memory. I remembered this, and I sent him a note of encouragement on Friday. And he responded, thanking me profusely and encouraging me in turn. 

The second half of how Chip and I became friends was when I invited all of my work friends over to watch a baseball game on my last day in the state before summer break. Chip was the only one who showed up, except for my sister who had come to drive home with me. 

Chip ended up joining my sister and some other friends and I for dinner. He told me that he thought my friends were awesome, and that I should make sure to keep him updated on my surely-to-be-adventurous summer. 

Wilfred

Oh, Wilfred. This is one of my favorite stories, until it gets sad.

During my fourth year at school, I spent three weeks in Israel with a great group of people. Wilfred was one of those people. While we didn't become great friends over the trip, we did chat and make fun of each other some (the basis of many of my friendships) and we enjoyed each other's company. At the end of the trip, I figured I would probably see most of those people rarely, if ever.

But then facebook came into the picture. Wilfred, and I joked back and forth on facebook all the time. We have a mutual friend that was involved in many of these conversations, but not all. Our facebook relationship was supremely flirty. And fun. And hilarious.

After a few weeks of this, Wilfred sent me a message saying he was in a "pickle" and he wanted to discuss it with me. Could I meet him at the campus coffee house so we could have a chat?

Now, this may seem like nothing to someone who is not me. But to me, I was convinced he was going to ask me out. It was a pickle because we were both seniors and starting something this late in a college career is ridiculous. But he was going to ask me out. And I was going to say yes. Of course.

So, I am at the campus coffee house, a little bit early. I think I tried and failed to work on homework. I may have read the same page in my book ten times before he showed up. And then he did. Show up. And I was shaking. Literally trembling from nerves and excitement. It was glorious. Oh, and then it tanked.

He started telling me about a project he was working on, having to do with the feelings of LGBT folks on campus. "Have I ever told you that I'm gay?"

Pah. No. No, sir, you have not.

So we talked about his project. And he told me that he had a crush on our mutual friend. He wanted to talk with me about it because he knew I am an ally, and he thought I might have some good advice, or at least be an acceptable sounding board.

Well, it took me a bit, but I got over Wilfred. It was much easier knowing that he wasn't into me because he wasn't into girls, not just because I wasn't good enough.

But we became really good friends. For the last few months of school, we were really quite close. We dealt with some similar issues, being a feminist ally and a semi-closeted gay man who were both involved in a fairly conservative christian community. So we talked a lot about these issues. And after we graduated, we still talked on facebook.

We would update each other about our goings on, and discuss problems we had run into.

And then we didn't. He didn't. He just stopped responding, and I still don't know why. He was becoming a really close friend and support. We made each other laugh, we talked each other down, and we envisioned a better world. I wish I had a friend like that, still.

Dante, Part Two

I remember exactly where I was the following week when my conversation with Dante came to a head. I was sitting in the parking lot of a White Castle (gross) with my family, and we were texting flirtatiously back and forth. So, so careful were we.

And this is when it happened. He said something to me about how weird I was. I told him that wasn't very creative. So he said:

"Well, I could say how great you are, or how freaking intimidating it is at how close you are to being perfect, but it's simpler just to say you're weird and stuff."

OK, so that's a paraphrase, but yes, I do remember what he said. 3, 4 years later. Wow.

I said:

"I think we need to talk."

So we talked. And talked. And talked. And determined that we really liked each other.

And then he told me all of the reasons I didn't want to be with him. It was like he immediately regretted admitting his feelings.

So we determined, mutually (mostly), that we wouldn't be together. At least for a while. But that maybe, after a few months, we would.

Again, he immediately regretted this. He said something along the lines of "if your prince charming comes along, don't ignore him because of me." And I said something like "I can wait."

Damn, looking at this from this angle, I can see that right from the beginning he was less into the arrangement than I was. I did do one thing smart and make him promise that if he stopped being into me, he was going to tell me. I guess I had some foresight.

Soon, I went off to school again. We were texting back and forth a lot, exchanging news about our lives, jokes, and the occasional tender word.

And then, a couple months into the semester, I told him that I missed him. He told me that he missed me, too, but that he didn't think we should use language like that. He told me that he hadn't been single in a long time, and that he wasn't going to give it up.

I assumed, for some dumb reason, that he meant that he wasn't going to give it up yet. That he still wanted to be with me, just not yet.

And then began a long process of me questioning him about what was going on with him, and him being fairly friendly but mostly distant.

And I kept waiting on him. Because I just knew that his self-imposed singleness would soon get old, and he would look up to see me waiting and run into my arms, and we would run off into the sunset together. I was such a naive tool. Probably still am.

Finally, after a really long time of waiting, and a crapload of veiled questioning, I asked him straight up if he had forgotten his promise. He told me that he was indeed still attracted to me, but he just wanted to be friends. "For now," I thought. Stupid, stupid.

It only took a couple weeks this time. I basically forced it out of him. We had a conversation. It went like this:

Me: You need to give me a straight answer about all of this.

Him: I want to keep my options open, but I can see that you won't let me. I made a mistake when I said those things to you a few months ago. I don't think we'll ever be together.

And I was really sad. It took me a while to forgive him, because he was basically leading me on for several months. But then, I did, or at least I said I did. I think I even believed that I did.

And we were friends for a while. But it was weird. And then, there was that one moment when I just knew that we were not friends anymore.

I had, long ago, borrowed a gorilla costume from him. I had it for a long time, promising that I would give it back the next time he saw me. He emailed me one day and said (in a kind, humorous, and whimsical manner) that he didn't want the costume back (actually what he said was that the costume preferred me to him, but I caught the drift). I haven't seen him since.

But what really irks me is that he has withdrawn not only from me, but from so many of our mutual friends. Our friendship is poisoned, and that's ok. But I wish he was able to stand my presence long enough to be friends with these other people who miss him as much (maybe) as I do.

And yes, I do miss him still. The pining is less keen since he got engaged, but sometimes I wonder what could have been.

Hah. I said in a previous post that I hope to never meet another person as charming as Gregory. Dante falls into that category. I need to stop being friends with smarmy dudes.

But that's the thing. We were actually just really good friends for a long time. Maybe what I need to stop doing is even considering getting involved with my male friends. Unfortunately, that strategy doesn't always work, which I found out with Chip.