Page 33: My First Friend

[lakinisjuice]

In 2003 my friend J had befriended someone who lived in her area. They had gone to the same school, but were in different grades. It turned out that the girl J had befriended was older; in fact, she’d been in my grade. I asked her name.
Kirsty S.
I recognised the name immediately and warned J to stay away from her. J listened to what I said to her and chose to ignore my advice, which bit her in the butt later on. But this is MY story, not J’s.
I warned J to stay away from Kirsty because of something very unkind she had done in high school. I outlined this to J, who wouldn’t understand Kirsty’s MO until history replayed itself and J almost lost her daughter as a result of Kirsty’s unyielding cruelty.
I did have the opportunity to speak to Kirsty on the phone at one point, while she was hanging with J. I used the opportunity to confront her. At first, she claimed that she didn’t remember what I was talking about, but why would she? It was nothing to her, I was just the butt-end of a cruel prank she played on someone she hated in her year 8 class. I have no doubt that she has done this many, many times. I would not be surprised to learn she has done it since the incident with J. This woman has no scruples. She has no soul. She is out for her own amusement and to hell with anyone who gets hurt, that’s not her problem.

The person in her class whom she hated, was my best friend, E.

Was.

I have no idea why Kirsty hated E. During that phone call in 2003 I did ask, but she didn’t have a legitimate reason aside from that she had hated E, saw her as a weak, “stuck up bitch” – she clearly didn’t know how strong and down-to-earth E was. I think the truth is that Kirsty saw her as fair game for cruel behaviour. Maybe she saw how talented E was, and realised that at her at her greatest moment would never hold a candle to E at her worst.

My Side of the Story
I started high school in 1992. Immediately, I found that I did not fit in. I don’t think I ever did in high school. Being a redhead with low self-esteem and a background of abuse & neglect tends to create some social challenges.
I met E, got to know her, let her in. We were instant friends, we had a blast together, always! She was stoic and poised – the yin to my clumsy, playful and careless yang. She loved music and understood it in a way I never could. I was emotionally stunted, I still played with my dolls. She was SO talented, I saw her as perfect, I idolised her. I was not talented, I was clumsy and shy – and I hid it by pretending to be outgoing and quirky. I felt lucky to have her as a friend. We were inseparable. From the moment I arrived at school, I would wait for her. We were in different classes, so I spent a lot of time thinking about what we would talk about at lunch time. We spent our weekends together doing goofy stuff - listening to music, dancing, singing songs, watching movies, cooking, talking and eating cheese and onion chips. E was everything to me.

One day I had been waiting for her as I always did. As soon as I saw her, I ran up to greet her. She was totally cold, she told me to look in my bag, then walked away. I went after her; I asked her what was wrong? She ignored me and stalked off. I had no idea what was going on, I had never experienced anything like it. I panicked, what had happened to her? I ran to my bag and opened it, shaking. Til I read the letter, I thought something terrible had happened to E and she was too traumatised to talk about it.
At first I thought it was a joke, but as I re-read the letter I figured out that E was telling me she did not want to be friends anymore. I didn’t understand, I thought we would always be friends. She kept mentioning a girl in her class named Kirsty. I had no idea who this was, I only knew one Kirsty and she didn’t know E. She didn’t even go to our school, she lived in Canberra and she was 6 years younger than me – my friend N’s little sister.

At morning tea, a blonde girl and one of her friends came up to me and started asking me questions about E. The blonde girl said she was in E’s class - I later found out that this was the same Kirsty who had filled E in on all the things I’d said about E behind her back. I had apparently entrusted hurtful comments about my best friend to someone I'd never even met.
I expressed my sadness over the letter, I begged her to please ask E to talk to me because I had no idea what was going on. She said she would, but my guess is she had no intention of ever helping me straighten out the mess she had created, she was simply collecting information to use to fuel whatever she had in mind.
I didn’t know what to believe, she seemed to want to help me and because I’d never experienced betrayal before, I believed her at first. After a few days, with my pleas going unanswered, she changed her tactic - she related to me that E was a horrible person, sympathised with me, she told me that E had done the same thing to her and pretended she had been crushed by it. She played me. She knew what she was doing.

It didn’t take long for me to figure out that Kirsty did not have my best interests at heart. I realised that she was manipulating the situation and I refused to answer any questions about E or be swayed into an emotional response, I was not going to beg anymore. I said that if E wanted to talk to me she could, but I had nothing else to say until she did. Kirsty must have grown bored with the situation, because she stopped bringing E up.

The hope and sadness passed, I became angry. E had been my best friend, yet she had never given me the opportunity to defend myself. My defense was simple: “I have no idea who this Kirsty is, she’s in your class, not mine.” I started to think about how unfair the situation was, how unfair E was. Weren’t best friends supposed to stick together? Didn’t she owe it to me to confront me if she thought I had wronged her? I started to wonder how real our friendship had been? I concluded that it had not been real, and moved on with my life with no hope of ever rekindling my friendship with E. As far as I was concerned, she no longer existed.

Kirsty and I would hang out most of the time, she introduced me to her group, we wagged together - we’d leave the school to go to the local shop, or Garden City, or Skateway. She was interested in boys and talked about sex a lot. I was a virgin and not at all interested in boys yet.
We had nothing in common, I really didn’t like her, she made me uncomfortable a lot - but I felt like I was part of the in-crowd.

At the end of the year, E started talking to me again, she came up to me and said she liked my hair (I'd just had it permed). I was SO relieved to have her back in my life that I cried happily in the sports change rooms. She and I did have things in common, she wasn’t trying to rush me into sleeping with some boy I didn’t even like, she was still into music and movies. I loved hanging with her. But in my heart, there was an open wound. I kept her at arm’s length, who knew when she would leave me another note? In the meantime, I was happy to be in her company again and I wouldn’t make waves. But I never trusted her fully again.

E tried very hard to compensate for what had happened, I knew she was sincere - but she had forced me to learn how to survive without her, and I had. The truth is that I didn’t try to be best friends with her again. I just didn’t see the point; to me a best friend is the person who is closest to you, the person you trust implicitly. Someone who, when faced with an accusation about you, will ASK you whether it’s true or not and someone who will give you an audience to explain your side of the story. Someone who is not afraid to confront you if they feel wronged by you. E had not been that person, and I wasn’t giving her a chance to betray me again. I did want to be friends with her, and I let her in that far but we drifted apart.

We got back in contact in 2002, had a very brief but meaningful friendship that ended when she made a post about her caring more about me than I did about her. She was so troubled at that point, I thought it was about someone else at first. When it became clear that it was about me, I had a flashback to 1992. I just couldn't go through that again, so I walked away. I should have stayed to reassure her that I did care, but I had seen her doing this with several of her friends during our brief re-friendship and at the time I just didn't see the point in going through the same thing with her - all the others were deemed not loyal enough and discarded, I knew I would be too.
There was a reason I had not let her in, trust. It was broken in 1992. E was right to feel that way, but she was wrong about me not caring. I cared a lot, I still do. I just couldn't let her in the way I wanted to, there were walls up. Once my trust is broken, it's broken forever. I'm a child of abuse and neglect, my coping mechanisms are what have helped me to survive.

I feel badly about not giving her a second chance, but ultimately I feel like it was the right thing to do. I am someone who can’t just fake something that isn’t there – it’s not fair to anyone. E WAS my best friend for a time. She was my first best friend, and I will never forget her. She will always have a special place in my heart, I will never let her go. After all these years, the pain has diminished to nothing, what remains is a memory of the girl I used to play with. The girl who was not too cool to float troll dolls down a flooded gutter with me. The girl who saw Wayne’s World with me and who appreciated the awesomeness of cheese and onion chips.
She once said, “we were never meant to be friends”. I don’t think that’s true, I think that we were meant to be friends for a short time, I think we taught each other something in 1992 and I think we’re both old enough now, mature enough to understand that.

People talk a big game about loyalty, but what is loyalty really? How is it defined? Is it who’s been here the longest? Is it standing by your friends no matter what? Is it swearing unquestionably to uphold your friendship above all else and refusing to let go of it? I think loyalty is all of that and more. I am loyal. You hurt me and I’ll be angry at you, but I’ll still love you. You betray me, I will never trust you fully again, but I’ll never forget about you and what you meant to me. Once bitten, forever wary. But even now, you’re on my mind. I don’t let people go, not in my heart.
In my life I have lost one meaningful friend. One. But contrary to popular belief, I lost her in 1992, the day she told me to look in my bag. Some wounds just don't heal.