I am in the business of losing best friends

“I am in the business of losing best friends.” That’s the sentence I started a poem with a few weeks ago. I was starting to dwell on the whole Craig and Bart thing and it was beginning to reinforce my belief that I was not a worthwhile best friend to anyone but Rachel. And when I realized I needed to blog for today, that’s what I wanted to write about- my best friends.

But then I started thinking about it more, on my way to class and then to Maggies afterwards (where I’m writing this now), and I realized something. Something that made me feel a whole lot better.

Let’s start with Craig. Dear Craig, I get it. We became friends firstly because we lived near each other, secondly because we needed someone to sit by on the bus, and thirdly because I was your safety net. You didn’t have friends outside me because you were afraid of judgement, and I always accepted you. We were a match made in heaven because we were both lonely loners who were scared of what others thought of us and we just happened to be neighbors.

But then we both went to college, me to the place I’ve always dreamed of and you to a place where you made friends easily and were accepted completely. You titled the last email you sent me “Animal by Miike Snow” and I never listened to it until a couple of weeks ago because I thought it would be too painful. It was painful, but then I listened to the lyrics.

In your eyes I see the eyes of somebody I knew before long long long ago
But I’m still trying to make my mind up
Am I free or am I tied up

Animal is a song about feeling tied down by your past and wanting to be free of it. I reminded you of feeling trapped in a tiny, crappy town and not having any friends. I reminded you of being afraid in your own hometown. I reminded you of the you that you didn’t want to be anymore, couldn’t be anymore. And I get it. I do. It’s still a shitty way to deal with that, just stopping talking to me, and I’m still really pissed at you about that, but I’m no longer sad. We became friends out of convenience and a mutual feeling of being broken, but we aren’t broken anymore, and neither are we conveniently located to remain friends.

I lost you because you didn’t need me anymore. That sucks, but life goes on.

And then there’s Bart. Honestly, I don’t know why I was so upset about you cutting me off because it was kind of your MO. We used to joke that you had no idea why I was your best friend, but it wasn’t a joke, was it? You finally realized that after I pulled my life and heart back together after Dylan and Sean and my dad and Craig and everything, at the end of the day, I would be ok without you. We became best friends when I was broken more than I’ve ever been broken before, but like I just said to Craig, I am broken no longer. I am broken no longer.

I truly do hope you are happy. I hope you and Brooke work out and get married and the Marines pay for a first rate education. Your Facebook was deactivated and your phone number no longer belongs to you and as far as I know you might be dead, but I hope you’re not. I wouldn’t never wish unhappiness on you, as unhappy as I have been as a result of you.

The same goes for Craig, fully and truly. I hope you, Craig, or Thomas, or whatever you’re going by these days, are happy. I hope Trinity is everything you hoped it would be, because no matter what kind of person you acted like to me, you don’t deserve anything less than the best out of life.

Here’s the thing about all my new revelations: It was still really crappy of you two jackasses to straight up cut me off when you realized it didn’t make any sense for us to be friends again. Your methods are questionable and you should work on that for the future, cowards, but whatever. Because I don’t need you anymore either.

First, I’ve got Rachel. Rachel, who has been my best friend for over fifteen years and who will probably continue to be my best friend until we both keel over with old age. No matter how far apart we grow, we always stay in touch because some things are worth holding on to no matter how hard it is to keep your grip.

Then I’ve got Ellen and Colton, who have been my roommates for over a year and who have probably put up with me more than anyone else in my life. They take me for walks when I get overheated, listen to me complain, pretend they don’t know when I’ve been crying, and help with the dishes even though I usually have to ask them first. I’m not going to say that they replaced Bart and Craig because that would be doing Ellen and Colton a disservice. They fill entirely different roles in my life- we did not become friends because of some emotional instability. We became friends because we had mutual interests and similar senses of humor. We care about each other and respect each other and fight constantly and laugh even more often than that, and I cannot express my gratitude for them in words.

I am not in the business of losing best friends. I am in the business of growing up. And who can be upset about that?