Hive Ave Fall2024 - Flipbook - Page 21
Hive Avenue Literary Journal
her cry out of my house, couldn’t be lying to me.
No, she was protecting me. She loved me.
She was my world.
University started again. After the birthday party 昀椀asco,
my group of friends became smaller and smaller. My social
circle, now composed of my best friend and three boys we knew.
That was it. I was studying away from her, so that meant going
through the arduous task - again - of 昀椀nding new friends at my
campus.
I’d always considered myself a feminist, so I quickly
joined student groups and collectives centered around female
empowerment and raising awareness for gender violence.
There, I met other smart, talented, incredible women. My pretentiousness died, making way for humility and respect. Other
women were just like me; they were the human aliveness in me.
And I could learn so much about myself and the world through
them.
The more I talked with my new friends…the more I spotted that missing spark from my conversations with my best
friend. We would go out for co昀昀ee and she would tell me everything she hated about everyone. She seemed to know everyone’s most embarrassing story and shared it proudly. And what
she said of girls we knew was the worst.
I would mostly nod or fake-laugh, but my mind was reeling. This was so di昀昀erent from my interactions with my new
friends, where we celebrated each other, or even women who
weren’t in the room. It felt like my best friend was spitting black
bile, and I was all too aware of its puddle now.
Was she depressed? Was she going through a rough
patch? No. I realized that this wasn’t something new. She had
always done this.
It was beginning to make me uncomfortable.
*
*
*
The last summer we spent together, I invited her to my
family apartment in Berlin. I also invited Jessie along. The three
of us cruised through parks and went to museums and enjoyed
the glint of the sun.
But my stomach dropped more and more as the days
passed and my best friend became a distortion of passion-aggression. Even Jessie would raise her eyebrows as my best friend
would click her tongue and turn her body away from me, gazing
out the window. What was she looking for out there that I didn’t
have?
She didn’t stay the whole trip. I did not know much about
her for two months. One of the last times I saw her, it was for an
hour at a co昀昀ee shop, where she said the trip had sucked. Then
she made fun of one of our friends for her clothing style. And
that was that.
I left her birthday gifts on her doorstep. She never
thanked me for them.
Non-Fiction
Months later, Jessie called me from Germany while I was
walking in the park. We laughed about old memories, and she
caught me up on her life. Eventually, she asked me about my
best friend, and I sighed.
“I’ve distanced myself from her,” I said. “She’s been kind
of cynical lately. Gossiping about everyone I know. Sometimes I
wonder if everything she says is real.”
“I don’t think so,” Jessie said. “I mean, she did lie about
your mom sleeping her way into buying the apartment in
Berlin.”
My phone almost fell from my hands as I tripped. It was
as if I’d heard the words underwater. “Can you repeat that? I
don’t think I heard you right.”
“She said your mom slept with a politician or something
to get money for the apartment. But I know that’s not true
because I know your mom.”
And just like that, my world shattered.
My “best friend”, who convinced me she was better than
me, who put me down, who spread cruel and nasty lies behind
my back to splinter my friendships.
She was trying to destroy me.
I should have seen this coming.
*
*
*
Much research and literature tackles relationship breakups. But what about friendship break-ups? What about friendship betrayals? I have never felt a bullet pierce my chest, but I
imagine it feels a lot like losing my best friend.
I cut all contact with her. Four years, sliced with the swiftness of a knife. There was no goodbye. There was no closure. Just
silence, and a wound that opens and closes on gloomy Sundays.
How could you grieve someone who had already lost you
a long, long time ago?
I reached out to Sophie, inviting her for a barbecue night
where I could apologize. Surprisingly, she accepted. When I told
her everything that had happened, she only nodded.
“She said the worst things about you behind your back,”
she said. “But don’t take it personally. She did it with me, too.
And with everyone else. That’s why we stopped inviting her to
our events a while back. We stopped taking her seriously.”
I didn’t revert to my old ways of thinking. Over time, I
made new best friends, all female. They are now a constant for
me. I don’t let it be otherwise. My girlfriends invite me out to
art galleries, rock climbing, and watercolor classes. They hug me
when I cry, they answer when I call. I don’t see them as my competition, and neither do they. We don’t 昀椀ght over petty jealousies, we don’t give backhanded compliments. We support each
other, we are entrepreneurial. They are nurturing, they are life
itself.
As Sophie suggested, I didn’t take it personally. My best
friend was a victim of a cruel, competitive system, the one all
21
