“All through my preteen and teenage years, I
had one best friend whom I shared everything with. I was a bit on the shy and
quiet side so I relied on her lively ways to spice up my life. In many ways, we
were opposites – my family was conservative while hers were very modern and
flexible; I was shy but she was very bold; I didn’t know how to talk to boys so
barely had any male friends but she had many male friends and knew how to be
around them. I held my best friend in high esteem because she was everything I
wanted to be.
When the results of our high school finals came
out, she made A’s in all her subjects while I had A’s in just half of mine – so
even in academics, she was on top. It was the same with the results of our
university entrance exams because her score was ahead of mine with over twenty
points. I was going to be an art student and she was going to study one of the
medical courses – it was an exciting time as we discussed how amazing it would
be to be college students. If only I knew what was ahead.
We had picked different schools and I left for
my school before her. It was before the advent of cellphones in the hands of
everyone so we could not communicate while apart. After the first semester
break, I was excited to get home and see her so we could exchange stories of
how our first semester went.
My school was about nine hours away by bus
which was what I took. Once I got home, I dropped my bags and rushed over to my
best friend’s house. She was not home but her sister asked me to wait. Her
sister also gave me the bad news that my friend did not go off to school like I
thought because there’d been allegations of exam malpractice in her exam center
which nullified most of the results from that center including hers. I was
upset to hear this, knowing all the plans we’d made and the conversations we’d
had.
When my best friend got home, she barely
looked at me or spoke to me. I sat there, uncertain of how to deal with her
silence. When her older sisters noticed her coldness towards me, they started
chatting with me. I stayed about an hour and when she continued to ignore me, I
left. It happened the same way the next day and days after that. I tried to get
her to talk to me but she would not. Eventually, I told my sister what was
going on and she asked me to stop going to my friend’s house and reluctantly, I
did.
We were so close so we shared many friends and
this made it awkward to hang out with my friends because they were her friends
and many of them were actually closer to her because of her extrovert nature.
At church or social events, we would meet and she would ignore me; if I went to
say hi to someone she was with, she would move away. We’d been like twins so
everyone noticed our separation and kept asking what caused our rift but I
didn’t have an answer to give. Even my mum kept asking me what was wrong and
didn’t believe when I said I didn’t know. I’m sure she thought we’d fought over
a boy or something but it was nothing like that. Just like that, my best friend
stopped talking to me.
This is about nineteen years since that time and
we still don’t talk. I’ve seen her a few times from a distance and once, we met
up close and she managed to say hi – it was so distant, you’d never believe we’d
been best friends once. I looked at her and wondered how she could treat me the
way she had all those years ago. All I
could think of was that I had committed the crime of beating her at something –
I’d entered college before her – and she didn’t like it. She was always ahead
and I’d always rejoiced in her success but when it was my turn (through no
fault of mine), she picked the option of hating me and I didn’t understand how
she could be that way.
So, that is the story of how I lost my best
friend. The truly annoying part is that it still hurts me when I think of her;
maybe because she was someone I liked and admired so much or her hateful attitude
rubbished the many moments we’d spent together - laughing at stuff or sharing secrets,
or it might be because she was my only real friend and one of the few I always
felt would be in my corner. It just still hurts.
1 comment:
This reminded me of an older post about friendship on this blog. Here's the link http://pingstop.blogspot.com/2012/08/can-mere-friend-break-your-heart_17.html
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