EPTToday, I want to tell you the story of my friendship with a girl I knew for 5 years. Her name is Gemma. She is the same age and in the same grade (going into college) as me.
When I met Gemma, we were both in 8th grade (age 13) in PE class. I'm not sure what drew us together, but I really liked talking with her and spending time with her. Over time, my feelings for her grew until it because a full on crush. Summer came and went, and through the discovery of Facebook, we were able to keep in contact. During that summer, she introduced me to her friend Lauren. For whatever reason, Lauren developed feelings for me as well and started flirting with me. The socially awkward 9th grade version of me could not realize this and I unknowingly flirted back with her, thinking I was being friendly by returning all of the "<3" messages that she gave me.
One night, Gemma, Lauren, and I went to a football game at our high school with some other friends. In America, it's basically like a friday night social event. Lauren continued flirting with me and I continued unintentionally flirting back with her. I don't even remember my interactions with Gemma that night, but I do remember the Facebook message she sent to me (I had already told her I liked her or she had figured it out, I don't really remember). In her message, she basically said that she liked me, but she saw that I was flirting with Lauren and decided that I had already moved on. I tried to tell her that I did not mean to and that I had no clue what I was doing, but she would not have any of it. After a month or so of the silent treatment, we eventually returned back to normal, although my chances of dating her were over. It still makes me facepalm when I think about that situation.
I'd like to take a pause here to talk about the influence that liking Gemma had on my interests and personality. Before I liked Gemma, I used to message people messages like "hey whts up man, how r u doin 2day?". Gemma always used proper punctuation and whole words when she texted or messaged, so I decided to copy that style and actually look intelligent. Go me. In terms of bigger changes, Gemma introduced me to The Beatles and 60s music. Before this, I would just like top 40 crap and whatever they played on Radio Disney (basically a kids station with really bad music). I never liked "slow songs" as they would bore me. When I first started listening to The Beatles, I was a bit skeptical. However, once I heard "Here Comes The Sun", I was hooked. I would listen to only Beatles music for months at a time, and I tried to look up everything about them and about other bands around them, such as The Rolling Stones. It was then that I learned about the counterculture movement of the 60s/70s and their ideals of peace and love. These were things that Gemma tried to replicate and guide her life (She is a huge hippie. She truly belongs in the 60s). For once in my life, I had music I was passionate about and ideals that I would try to shape my life around. While I never became much of a hippie, I felt like I had found something I could follow and try to be. When I told Gemma about her influence on me, she was both surprised and happy to hear that she was the big influence on me. I would say that liking her was one of the best things that happened to me, even though our relationship did not go anywhere past friends.
The friendship between Gemma and I was never a normal one. We would never talk every day like best friends. Sometimes I wouldn't tell Gemma things as they happened because I thought it wasn't important enough for her. I'm pretty sure the respect and adoration I had for her never truly went away after the opportunity to date her passed. I always venerated her and held her in high regard, and she deserved it. Anyways, I would never go eat lunch with her because I was always at odds with her group of friends: some of them were nice, but some of them simply did not want me around and basically ostracized me from their discussions. I was never one to talk too much, so the combination meant that I could really talk to Gemma unless it was just her and I alone, which would happen about every 3 months. However, we would spill everything we had to say into these conversations. We would sing Beatles songs and listen to 60s music and basically speak our minds and talk about what was going on in our lives. We would talk for 5-6 hours and it would make up for the infrequency of our time together.
This continued throughout high school until the middle of senior year. She basically went off the radar to me. She stopped answering my texts and she stopped talking to me in general. When I asked Lauren about it, Lauren would be very coy about it. At first she said that Gemma was having issues (that I assumed was graduation anxiety), and then she would say that Gemma was fine and that Gemma was always fine and that Oceana was always at war with Eastasia. I tried so hard to get to Gemma and to get her to let me in so I could help her with whatever the problem was, but she refused. I was hard pressed to get her to sign my yearbook. She refused to make eye contact with me. After we graduated, I sent her a text message saying that I had grown impatient with her and that I wanted to know what was wrong and why she was acting as such. She told me that she was doing better and she was working on acting better in front of people and not letting her issues (which to this day I still do not know) show as much, in response to my comment that she refused to make eye contact with me. We set up a time to hang out on July 3rd, and we talked then.
On July 3rd, we did our usual talk and everything seemed to be going well. This was the first time that we had more than 2 minutes of conversation since November. We talked about what was going on, and she revealed to me that she had gotten a boyfriend a couple of weeks ago. I was really happy for her (because I know the guy and he's really cool) but was really weirded out because I didn't see it coming. We just talked about the future and a bunch of irrelevant stuff for this blog. I also told her about a concert that we had gone to 2 years in a row and she said she wanted to do it for a third year. I was really happy and not worrying about it as I went on vacation and we did not talk for a couple of weeks.
Leading up to the concert, I sent her a text message asking if she was still going to go to the concert with me. She said yes. A couple of days later, she said she also had a friend's singing performance to attend earlier in the day on the day of the concert, and that she wanted to do both. Lastly, she sent me a text message on Wednesday saying that she was not going to go due to "a couple of things" . I suspected it was because she chose her friend over me, and I basically sent her a text back saying that I was really disappointed because she was giving her other friends all of these opportunities to spend time with her and I was getting shut out. I told her that it was hard for us to call each other good friends because we don't talk very often and she was always very flaky with me. I would always have to text her on the day I wanted to hang out with her and ask her if she wanted to hang out. Any earlier and she would say "maybe". Many times she would not reply at all. I also told her that she was not being real with me, and that she was keeping secrets from me.
She replied saying something along the lines of "I made a commitment to my friend that I would see his show" followed by a legit reason to not want to go which I will not say, followed by "And this is probably going to sound like a shallow or bad reason--and maybe it is--but I also want to spend time with my boyfriend on Sunday night; and that would fit in perfectly with my day". She went on to say that she's drifted away from all but three people (2 close friends and her boyfriend) and that she feels secure in "the few people she has".
At this point, I was not very happy with her. I basically felt as though I didn't make the cut as one of her friends. I simply told her that I don't want to talk to her for a few months, and I told her "goodbye for now". She's moving up to San Francisco, and I would not want to see her before then.
As I just said, I was really hurt by what she said. It felt like I didn't make the cut to be her friend. Of course, she's known her two friends for 10+ years, but I really felt like we had a lot of common interests and we got along together very well. She was instrumental in helping me find who I want to be, and now she's gone. The worst part of this is that I cannot tell if my other friendships are this way or if I'm just being paranoid. Every time I get a "no I can't hang out, I am busy", I wonder if they are actually busy or not. I've never been a sociable guy, and I don't have a terrible amount of friends. However, I've always thought that the few friendships I've had were really secure. Now, it feels like there has been an earthquake and I can't assess the damage. People are moving out to college in a matter of weeks. The day of separation has come. The day that has loomed over us since we came into this world is coming, and yet we still made friendships and make promises that they will last. Now, I wonder how many of these promises were empty, whether they were never filled in the first place or drained by the journey of life. If I go left at a fork and my friends go right, will we ever be able to find each other again? The only way to find out is to keep going down the path.
Thank you for reading if you are still here. I'm sorry for the tangent, but I had to empty my brain.
