A Place Off Ocean Avenue

I don't understand a lot of things. I've said many times in this blog that I've been blessed with the best friends ever. Sometimes those friendships deteriorate, and sometimes loose ends aren't always tied up. Mark Twain once said, "It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense." Real life doesn't always. Sometimes it just happens.

I wrote a blog post a while ago called, "Oh yeah, I forgot!" The friend that inspired that blog post was also the friend that inspired this journal entry from early 2010:

"Today I had another one of those realizations that people talk about, but that never rung true; it was a sad one. I discovered that, in all reality, I will never talk to some of the people who had once been my dear friends again. Let's be real. Most of my best friends are girls, and someday they'll get married and have families. I will get to keep one girl. For most of these people, I am done in their lives. I'd love to be able to hang out, and be super chummy with all their families and live in a big society of doing fun things forever. It just doesn't work that way. I think the greatest tragedy is that some of these people will fade from my memory. How will I remember the casual friends, if I rarely hear from the best friends? It's a grief that I almost cannot suppress. I wish I had kept better Journals. In my many dates, plethora of jokes, stories, fights and just every day happenstance, I could have kept the great legacy of some truly great people alive in my own life. I suppose that as life goes on, I'll find that these people still push along just fine without me. I wish I didn't have to lose them."

It's this feeling that my friends walk away from me, or stop caring that has gotten to me lately and made me want to blog about one of the few people in my life I've ever considered my best friend.

I'm not sure that I should bore you, dear, beloved reader with the time that I met this friend. After all, there's nothing truly special about asking the girl next to you for a piece of paper in your science class. Though I must admit, this is one of the few starts to friendship that I do remember.

I think I'd be embarrassed sick if anyone other than me knew the extent of weirdness my crush on this girl had. For the better part of, what, six years? I did all kinds of weird things in regard to this girl, all with the hope that at some point she might tell me she was interested in me. I mean, if we hadn't been such good friends, I'd definitely have been bordering on stalking sometimes. Which, you know, maybe I was anyway.

I think that there were points in my life where this friend and I talked for hours every day. We'd stay up super late during the summer, and probably a fair amount during the school year talking on MSN messenger, and playing Minesweeper Flags, or Solitaire Showdown. And we'd talk about everything. I don't think there's one thing this friend couldn't get out of me, or really me of her.

There are too many times to count where we'd pass notes in class, either through calculators, or rolling notes on the floor, or choosing to sit next to one another and just doing it in a notebook the old fashioned way. Few of our teachers ever caught us.

There are dozens of awkward moments that made me laugh, like time time that she had a slip of the tongue making it sound like the boy she had the hotts for had gotten her pregnant. The time she loudly cat-called that same boy from the back of the gym when he was in a play. The time that lots of jealous boys were convinced that I was going to kiss her on the last day of school because I was transferring schools so they made a big deal of not letting me be around her when she signed my yearbook. The numerous times I said things that were uncomfortable, because despite being my best friend, I had a crush on her.

We also were there for each other a lot more than I ever realized. I watched her competed in drill competitions, attended her Miss (our home town) pageants, and cheered loudly for her tap number in said competition. She came and saw me compete in my high school's spoof Mr. Universe contest. She was the first friend I called when I got my first kiss, and she promptly called me a VERY rude name that sounds suspiciously like "Man-Chore". When she dated a pretty crappy guy, (or two) in high school, we talked about it, and she knew that I'd be happy to get beat up trying to fight one of those guys for hurting her (because some of them were wrestlers, or football players, and I'm trying to be a Drama teacher, so I mean, I could pantomime them, but that's about it.) She and her awesome sister were even there for me when none of my other friends were at a really dark point in my life. They came and visited me when I couldn't leave the house, they did things with me, and they talked to me. She'd come visit me at work, and did all the things you'd ever want in a best friend.

We did all the things best friends should do. She picked the best cologne for me (which is no longer made, but which I still have some of), I encouraged her to splurge on clothes when she wanted to. We cheated on a test, or perhaps several in 9th grade biology. Went to lunch together, and she was nice enough to let me pay. We went on a couple actual dates. We talked about where the best places to kiss someone would be. We both were, and are, people who have Disney pumping through our veins. When we were in tables of three in that same biology class we kicked the other kid off our table to do projects (or cheat on tests) together. We knew one another's families, and her littlest sister is, to this day, the cutest little girl I know.

But something happened. It's taken me years to really figure it out. Truly, I didn't understand why what felt like such a powerful friendship in 8th and 9th grade turned into a friendship that, really, I almost resented.

Many of the things I talked about happened after ninth grade. But we were at different schools, leading different lives, not really involved with one another. My life was good. Hers was good. I should have been happy for the things going on with her, but I wasn't. I realized a long long long time later, that really, I just resented the fact that my friendship didn't become what I wanted it to become as a high school boy. I wanted to date her. I didn't care at the time about the fact that she hung out with me, or that she put up with a LOT of things that I said and did that weren't kind.  I didn't care that she treated my like a friend, when I was convinced she MUST view me as an inferior, because if she viewed me as an equal she'd be mad about me. I felt like, because I treasured nearly every second that I'd ever spend with this friend as a bit of gold that was too good to let go of, some how her contributions to our friendship were lesser, or not as important. In essence, I allowed my own toxin, my own dirty windows as it were, to not be able to look clearly at the best best friend I had, for many years.

So, really, all I have to say to this friend, is that I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I didn't act normally around you. Sorry that my standards were different for you than anyone else. I'm sorry that I felt the need to be appreciated in any little thing I did to or for you; Sorry that every time you had something else going on, or I was unable to spend time with you in the way I wanted to, I took it really personally. I'm sorry that I let the cloud of a crush detract from your being an absolutely excellent person, and someone who has accomplished great things. It took me realizing that you were going to marry someone else to begin to let go of things, and to realize that's not what either of us would have liked out of this friendship anyway. I'm super grateful that you were a mature enough friend to never take advantage of the fact that I liked you, and that you have been able to forgive (and presumably forget) some of my more foolish moments in life.

I think this is my longest blog post to this point, and even it feels inadequate to describe the barrels of laughs we've shared, and some of the angst as well. While not being my best friend ever (That would be my darling wife), you have always been one of the best.

Thank you. Thank you SO much.