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.
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