When a person just doesn’t deserve a friendship
Monday, July 31st, 2006Girl, this is my first public declaration of resentment. Yes, I’m giving you the luxury of being talked and thought about; that because of you and most especially, your boyfriend who I thought was a gentleman to be admired and at the same time an old friend of whose friendship was worth fighting for, I’m deeply affected and hurt.
But hell, no. Affected as I am, I’m not gonna let people like you pull me down. Come again?! I am bitter and too defensive?! Tell me, honestly, wouldn’t you feel the need to defend yourself if you feel you are in the right? Well I’ve got news for you so read carefully. I value my friends. I am a rational person who gives even those who hurt me the benefit of the doubt. I am a decent girl who had been more than once a girlfriend and therefore knows her boundaries well. But I am definitely not somebody who could be messed up by just about anybody. What I am not is somebody who would just give in without putting up a fight. I am not the type who would just shut up as people are abusing my silence and my kindness. And finally, I am not the kind of person brought up and placed in the best educational institutions only to just not react or take action as people are treating me like dirt.
I react not to force people to like or believe me. I owe it to myself to at least defend my principles and beliefs and justify my actions if I know I am in the right position to do so. I wouldn’t be able to rest knowing that I did not do anything or even gave a piece of my mind. The proactive gene is dominant in me. At least I said something. At least I did something. At least I wouldn’t be accused of non-action when I knew my conscience clearly shouts out that I felt, heard and saw something.
Congratulations! With that statement of yours that I should get myself a guy, you definitely were able to pull a really sensitive nerve of mine. FYI, I have a blossoming career and a bunch of male friends, who, with or without a girlfriend, with or without a problem, are still those worth fighting for as friends primarily because they respect me.
Note that for you to have gotten me this haywired, it is a real achievement in itself - truly something that my ex-boyfriend wasn’t even able to do at our worst of break-ups.
Furthermore, you didn’t do it alone, so the credit goes to you and to your boyfriend who is now somebody I just recently came to know as not just a former colleague of mine BUT IS NOW A FORMER FRIEND OF MINE AS WELL.
My approach maybe misleading, but a friend wouldn’t judge hastily. A friend wouldn’t just let malice get the better of his rationality. A friend would let his friend explain, fair and square. A friend would first give the benefit of the doubt. A friend would at least be considerate enough that if he didn’t have any valid reason or desire to arrive at a meeting he partly set in the first place, he would at least create excuses and inform his friend of such. A friend would, most especially and most importantly, be decent enough to give and receive courtesy and respect.
I’ve never felt resentment this strong before. But don’t worry. I’m still well-bred enough not to announce your names in public. I’m still civil not to treat you like invisible people should I encounter you. I’m still kind not just to you but to my own self as well to someday forgive you and let go of my bitterness over what you did.
And finally, to YOU, man, you know who you are and what you did and thought about. The incidents that followed this week were not isolated cases. You knew what transpired the past few months every time we’d get to talk. Remember? Escape artist? Invisible man? I still gave you the benefit of the doubt. I still extended my patience as I considered you a friend worth fighting for. Girl or boy, I value my friends and some of my other friends could testify up to what lengths I could go to just to save a friendship or at least repair troubles, minor or major. You are a big disappointment. No friend of mine has ever treated me this way before.
To think the only thing I was originally asking from you was a purely innocent face-to-face catching up, a pressure-free no-strings-attached chat between friends who haven’t seen each other in a long time, a friendly meeting between people who are just, geographically, an arm’s length away from each other whether coincidentally or technically. But each time you’d silently turned me down. You lead me on then you got me confused. One minute you were making your presence felt. One minute you were gone. I am not numb or stupid not to feel that something’s wrong which was why I persevered to talk to you to clear things up once and for all even if it meant stooping at depths dangerously way below me.
My words are my only courses of defense and I’m not stopping until I said it all. We really shouldn’t have any problems in the first place had you not put malice into the interpretation of my actions!
An officemate told me that the diff between guys and girls is that the former take things literally and that the latter fuss with the subtext. But it seems our case is one big exception.
Dude, whatever happened before between us had been over for the past four years! Do you think I’m crazy to run after you knowing that you are in a relationship rut and that I have just barely recovered from aftermath of the break-up of my own relationship?! You must be kidding! I am not that desperate! Sure I did say that I never stopped liking you, but didn’t I also made it clear to you a number of times that even with that given statement, my interest was only seeing and catching up with an old friend? That it was not just you who I have been striving to meet and get together with the past few months?
You were asking how come it’s so sudden that I wanted to meet up with you. My answer isn’t something you wouldn’t understand but I’d try just the same to put it in words. The recent major heartaches I underwent this current year - my mom’s death, the end of my three-year relationship with my boyfriend and God-knows-what-else - all these were more than enough to put me at my wit’s end. I needed to be with friends, old or new, just to remind me of who I still am and who I could be. I needed to let go of pieces of emotional baggage from the past so nothing would pull me down on my way up.
But you - you are a heavy emotional baggage. You let down a person who you didn’t even think could possibly help you out as well with whichever load you are currently carrying as what she did and is still willing to do with countless other friends regardless of the depth and length of their friendship with her.
I had been a friend to you until you chose to take a four-year friendship for granted by letting yourself be blinded by what you had seen on the surface. Sure. How I saw you as a friend might not be as deep as how you saw me as one to you. But just the same, you chose to hurt me. You have let me down.
And what had happened - you having to make me look like a fool by waiting for hours on end not just once but twice without even telling me that you’re not coming - is a big deal to me, as is to anyone else who would be treated that way. A big deal, enough to end a friendship and not let myself give in to hopes that you’d realize how wrong you treated somebody who treasured your existence in her life.
I’ve never felt resentment, hatred this strong before that this is actually my first time to say this: I don’t care anymore. You do not deserve to be my friend. You do not deserve my generosity and patience. But I’m still going to respect you as at least a person deserving of pride and dignity, even if you didn’t give me that luxury.
Second chance? You’re still entitled to it. But don’t think it would be that easy especially after having known how small you thought of me and after having experienced how low you treated me.
1. Zac Efron - For no particular reason why this cutie from the Disney cable movie hit "High School Musical" is on the top of my list. At the risk of being accused of toying with the idea of a May-December affair (Hmm… Come to think of it, not bad considering I’m just four years his senior… Haahaa..), he’s here, making me reminisce my idea of high school puppy love. What can I do? He’s such a cutie, his cuteness making me giggle like a teenager. I mean, don’t you agree? ;p
