you're fired!

yesterday, my friend asked me if i had ever "broken up" with a friend.
well, the answer is yes.

here is that story.

we had been best buds since nursery school. we watched "david the gnome" during lunches of grilled cheese in elementary school. we switched schools together and carpooled every day. we approached puberty, we started playing sports, we made new friends.

i think i have always been a "fuddy duddy" in other people's eyes. i really liked myself though, when i was in middle school. i thought i was cool (except i had zits, thanks to early puberty, which were not cool). as it turns out, i was sharon (of my so-called life), and she was angela. very soon, she acquired a rayanne. our real-life rayanne was rich, and cool. she had an older sister who was bad ass. i was a team player who just said no. i had an older brother who was bad ass, but i didn't know it at the time. all that rayanne and i (sharon) had in common was that we both dyed our hair with manic panic (she was red, i was purple). by the time we had finished middle school and in the beginning of high school, we were running with different crowds. angela and rayanne were hanging out all of the time. i was starting to feel unsteady about my relationship with angela. one weekend, i called her to hang out that evening. angela said she would come over later. when later arrived, she called and said she couldn't come over because she had to babysit. back in school the following week, i found out that she had actually been out with rayanne that evening. i confronted her about it. i wrote her a novel/letter. it said that i could not be lied to, and i was tired of being stuck as the runner-up. we exchanged words on the phone, as she was now away at school, and we ended things. we stopped talking, stopped writing letters, stopped hanging out when she was home.

i felt that it was better for me not to have to feel so badly about someone who was supposed to be my friend. it was a little better. it was a weight lifted off of my shoulders to release us of the then burden of maintaining a friendship, but it was still very sad.

a happy ending: angela returned home the following year and we made up. slowly we returned to being friends again, and we are in touch today.

i consider that the only real friend "break up" i've ever had. i've of course lost touch with several others, but that is the only one that i facilitated and the only one that healed itself.