Sour Apples

I loved you like a brother once, but now I don’t know how to feel. I look back, at the good times and the bad. The arguments and fights. The laughs and jokes. Part of me hates you, wants to make you suffer, to hurt, to know the anguish you caused me. Part of me wants to reconcile and fix this whole mess. But I have to meet in the middle, we aren’t friends, but I’d like to think we aren’t enemies either.

I know you have your issues, we both do, but there is a lot that’s happened, and any way of moving past this died with your poor choice of words. I drove you to ending our friendship, my asshole ways, my blunt, head strong temper, but it was you who pulled that trigger, you who brought it all crashing down.

I don’t think you meant to come off as you did, reaching out those days after, but it was shitty what was said. Telling me to change, that you have no problem kicking me to the curb because I was such a terrible issue to you. Made me feel worthless, like I was a good that could be thrown away without a second thought, that I wasn’t a person to you, just a commodity. I was the problem, I had to change, or I didn’t belong in your life. There was no middle ground it felt, it was your way or the highway, and I wasn’t going to let you kick me and belittle me like that, I have self-respect, dignity, but maybe you thought you came off different?

I didn’t come crawling back, begging for your friendship, far as I was concerned, you had ended it and we were living in the aftermath. There was no going back, this was what you wanted, this was what you requested, and who was I to try and fight this? You had me call first thing in the morning, clearly, to me, you had been mulling this over for a while, so what could I have said to change your mind?

You talk about learning skills, how you want to help people, but you never change the approach. You think everything that works for you works for everyone, but people aren’t the same, people are different, unique, they need different approaches because what works for one doesn’t work for all. I tried telling you this, when I was hurt by your friends’ words, tried telling you how I felt. You told me you understood, then belittled how I felt, telling me how I was taking it was childish. I asked for space, I knew I’d be spiteful and I needed space to calm down. I didn’t want to end our friendship, I just needed time to breath. It was you who chose to sever ties, not caring to take that time and reflect.

When I refused to mend our friendship, when you came to me, telling me how easily I can be dropped, how I need to change, and I refused to submit and grovel, you then became petty, telling me how it was I who was distorting our friend group. How without you I was without a lack of support or reason, and yet, how many of our mutual friends had I known longer? The ones who saw me through the darkest of my life and stuck by me, before we’d met. You put yourself on this god tier pedestal it felt and expected me to stoop to your feet and repent, that my life could not bare to be without you. You compared me to your abusive ex, telling me to prove myself to you, and yet you transformed into the very toxic one I had, the same I had opened up and we spoke those long nights about. You had become the very thing you hated and I was taken back, was this the real you exposed? I’d like to think it was just how I was reading it, but it made me feel terrible.

Now I was adamant, I refused to bend the knee, and then you gaslighted me, told me my ‘foggy-minded depression’ was what was causing me to respond like this. You tried to make me doubt my own beliefs, question my own self-worth, self-respect. You ended it, telling me to change, if not for you, then for the next [name], as if I would replace one for another, but the only thought I had was, why would I ever want another you if the current one was so terrible, so self-center and egotistical, narcissistic to the point that he couldn’t look past himself, his aura of self-proclaimed superiority blinding him from the thoughts and feelings of the people who once cared for him deeply.

We had silence, till you asked our friend to tell me you wished to talk. At this point, I’d come to the conclusion we could never be friends, that if I needed you, if I hit a dark low, this only proved that you’d toss me aside because I no longer fit the mold you so desired. I called, I was cordial and respectful, told you I wish you the best and a prosperous successful life. That if I saw you out, I’d be polite, but our friendship was complete. It was done. We hung up, and that was that. But you had to be petty, so you sent a message the next day, telling me off.

Were we ever friends? Truly? Friends don’t belittle other friends, they don’t demean them, they don’t gaslight or make them feel inferior, they don’t make them grovel or any of that. It was always a problem getting you to come to us so we had to go to you. We always had to accommodate you if felt. I get it, we all need to work on ourselves, but you kept telling me to change, you wanted to help me change, but I never asked for your help, I asked for a friend, and I thought I had gotten one but I look back and it seems I never did. The disrespect, the accusations, all of it. I have no ill will, but I do have anger, I do have this rage. I want to destroy, to hurt, but I’m better than that. I won’t stoop so low as to become you, to be the villain you want me to be. Live your life, be happy. You soured this friendship.