A moment that really changed me is when my relationships with integral people in my life was altered. All in the same year. There were a total of three, but one outright “ran its course” so to say. This is the one that affected me most deeply, so I’ll be talking about that one, but it’s really a whole road that can’t be trekked down in the form of a post, so I won’t be dwelling on it for long.

She was someone that I’ve known since elementary school, and when we first became acquainted (around the 4th or 5th grade I believe), we always got along due to sharing a similar friend group. Then came middle school, and although we were on different floors, once again, we always got along when we came across each other and ended up becoming friends of sorts, I guess due to the comradeship that came with having attended the same elementary school.

Then came high school, when our friendship really developed into something I cherished, something precious enough to the point where I still haven’t fully gotten over the fact that it fell apart, even though it’s almost been 5 years since.

Note how I said that I haven’t gotten over the fact that it fell apart, rather than I haven’t gotten over her or the fact that we used to be friends. Because how can we cast away relationships, people that we care for and are beloved to us, so easily? So carelessly? Heartlessly, even. How?

I won’t make it seem as if I wasn’t at fault though. A lot of the things I did that built up the feelings she had at the end were very much my transgressions, due to me not knowing how to handle the change she had underwent, not knowing how to handle my own personal problems and insecurities, and new personal problems that I was developing that blossomed into auxiliary issues that began to bleed through, that once again, I didn’t have a grasp of.

However, at the heart of things, this was someone I cared for and wanted the best for, and if that meant staying true to my ideals and not becoming a ‘Yes Man’ like others she kept around, so be it.

Nonetheless, our friendship deteriorated and like life in Hobbes’s State of Nature, met a quick, insignificant, brutal end. Only I’m to blame. Maybe things would’ve been different if I wasn’t so selfish, or if I wasn’t so sensitive. Maybe things would’ve been different if I had been a touch more understanding, and just slightly less petty. Anything that would’ve allowed be to have been there for her when she needed me, which in this key instance ironically enough, was due to me not being around. I should’ve known better, but I didn’t think things through, I didn’t care, and as a result, I was in the wrong place at the perfect time and outside influences filled up the space I vacated, and even if it was only for a time, it was enough to bring about the change in her that would end one of the most influential relationships I had in those essential, adolescent years.

All the pain I feel, I bring to myself. If I come across as bitter, it’s not a matter of perception but fact. Yet, such is the nature of life. What else can be said?