Current Story, Horrible Situation

[lblue]

Sorry this is so long. Please read it if you'd like to, I'm in need of advice, considering I can't tell any of my friI’m smart.


I’m in love with my best friend.
That’s so cliche, and it’s why another friend always compares my life to a Young Adult novel.
Or, considering I’m a little gringa in a love triangle of Latinos, a telenovela. Take your pick.

Let’s start from the beginning.

There’s this boy, we’ll call him D. Sixth grade, first day of school, he was my greeter-- the kid whose job it is to make the new kid feel at home. I had just moved cities, and was feeling extremely insecure and out of place in this new environment where everyone was speaking in a language I didn’t understand. D was kind, welcoming, charming-- until the teacher left. Then he turned into a taunting, touching bastard who I hated. We hated each other. He was the menace that bothered me everyday in his scratchy, gravely voice that sounded somewhat frog-like from the pollution in Mexico City. But as much as we hated each other, we were drawn to each other. He was the kind of person that made my atoms shift when he entered the same room, the kid that always raised his hand at the exact same time and always had the same thing to say. There was an unspoken-of connection between us two, even with the Cold War brewing between us.


Around age 13, there was a shift.
It’s hard to say why.
Maybe it’s because we both started to grow from children to adults, and as our faces changed and bodies filled out and stretched and grew, we realized an attraction to the other person that manifested in butterflies and goosebumps when your dark eyes met my bright green ones.

D and I started to become friends. Fast friends, skyping-every-night, tell-me-everything friends. It was a bit of a social crisis. How are they friends? Her and him? What’s going on? It was such a sudden change to everyone else, but to me, it was the most natural thing in the world. Being with him felt so real, like I had known you since the second we entered this earth. It was both amazing and horrifying to look at someone and know that they’re looking straight through you. There was no such thing as walls around D. We couldn’t build walls because they would crumble the second either of us opened our mouths. This ability to be so vulnerable with each other, whether we liked it or not, was both a blessing and a curse.

D was the first boy I had a crush on. I finally recognized that in sixth grade, our intense hatred was a crush of the most common kind. This infatuation disappeared and even when we became friends, I didn’t think of D in a romantic manner. I never tried to box him into a character that was supposed to be a part of the play of life. I never felt the need to.

The lines slowly became blurrier, as time went on. Is it acceptable for best friends to flirt with each other? To sit on each others laps, to nap together, or to cuddle together comfortably while scrolling through Facebook or finding good music to download? The answer is no, but for two solid years this was our relationship. I didn’t realize that it wasn’t normal to skype every night with someone, to share everything about your life with them, and for you to know their family and life story so well that when they tell you some fun fact about their great-great-grandpa, you laugh because you already know it. They’ve told it to you, many many times.

We realized we shared so much more than we thought. Both intellectual, politics-loving, emotionally disturbed people who hate vulnerability more than anything. Ambitious people who wanted to change the world and run it at the same time. We recognized, without telling each other, that what we shared was something very special, a bond that ran deeper than most. Something you don’t find very often in this large and complicated world of ours. And as these connections grew, our dependability on each other also grew. There were periods of time where, for some reason or another, we didn’t talk. Then, after these mundane days or weeks ended, one of us would call the other and pour out our words for hours and hours one night. Nothing had changed. We realized that living without each other was too difficult to do, so we stopped doing it.

I was introduced to another boy, we shall call him S, in the end of freshman year. By D. Actually, S is D’s best bro since they were 5. (The plot thickens). Turns out S and another new kid were coming to our school in sophomore year, and D wanted to introduce me to them via Skype. It was awkward, I felt uncomfortable and ugly, and I was terrified that these boys were going to steal my best friend away from me. After a couple awkward group skypes, everything went back to normal and I didn’t talk to the new kids anymore.

Then sophomore year happened.

These new boys, who I had been so scared of, turned out to be incredible people, one of whom has been one of the greatest friends I’ve ever had (and hopefully will continue to be). I’m currently dating the other one. And no, D is neither of those.

Let me explain.

D and I remained each other’s people throughout the year. The best of friends, always always always. We became closer and more dependent than ever. When we were mad at each other, both of us spent that time upset and depressed. But we couldn’t stay mad, or stay apart, for very long.
Nothing happened romantically, despite the natural path that says something should’ve.
And when winter break rolled around, D went off to Mexico to party and find himself in alcohol and girls and I stayed in town, finding myself falling under the spell of a player from another school and starting a comfortable friendship with the boy named S, who happened to be good friends with said player.

S and I became very good friends-- I found myself trying to make him fill the gap left by D’s absence. We had a comfortable, light, and funny relationship, nothing heavy or intense. He complimented me and made me laugh, and I shut down his advances many, many times as I continued to have a complicated flirtation with the player.

D came back. I didn’t tell him about the player. He knew about S. S changed nothing-- D and I were back, and we were ****ing unstoppable.

I finally hooked up with the player, and the aftermath was horrible, and we stopped talking. Typical. Throughout it all, S was the mediator. He helped me out, and made me feel happy and liked once again. He would later tell me it was his way of trying to convince me that he was the better guy for me.

Looking back, I can’t believe I didn’t think D thought of me as anything more than a friend. But sadly, both of us are over-analyzing, cowardly people who can’t put ourselves at emotional risks. The opportunity was never right, the timing was always off, and so we went and numbed ourselves with other people and continued to keep things in the beautiful yet not completely satisfying state that they were. The hints of the kind of dates he’d like to take girls on, calling me his novia around people we didn’t know, jokingly asking me to prom, constantly starting to ask for physical praise. It was too scary to admit how much we felt about each other because it’s so much easier to makeout with a pair of lips that you won’t be thinking about again afterwards. It was always there but never touched.

Eventually, I found myself in a relationship with S, after he started to like another girl and I felt jealous and possessive and realized I did have some feelings for him. The problem was that I wasn’t physically attracted to him-- but that was remedied by some physical contact, and then some more physical contact..

And of course, my relationship with D changed. At concerts, when I was with S, D would come up to us and make kissing faces and then dis me when I tried to talk to him. When I asked D if he had a prom date, he gave me a brutal “Why do you care? You have (S)!”
It took a couple weeks, but the period of hatred and insults and glares across the classroom stopped and eventually we fell right back into our normal routine of closeness. Our friendship became stronger than ever, the usual inside jokes, everything about us that’s perfect and makes me feel like I’m in a whole different world when I’m with him. There was one difference, however: we never really talked about S, and if we did, it was D bringing up some embarrassing story or ugly picture of him.

Flashback to end of freshman year. D mentioned the idea of boarding school, saying he didn’t think he could be as successful as he wanted to here at home where he had no parents around and more freedom than any teenager could ever want. I laughed it off, because it was such a distant possibility.

Back to the present. D asked me to help with a resume one night. I asked if it was for another internship, like the cover letter I helped him write to intern with an ambassador. Turns out this resume was for D’s application to military boarding school, in a state that’s a 3 hour plane ride. But I didn’t freak out, yet, because D thought getting accepted was such a far-fetched idea. So I stayed calm.

Then summer happened. S left, D left. Things with S are great. Great! He’s the perfect boyfriend, and treats me like a queen. It’s a good, stable, balanced relationship to have in high school, because it doesn’t make you feel like you need the other person in order to breathe.
But I can’t help thinking that I want a deeper relationship, beyond playful, flirtatious texts back and forth and physical fun times. I want something with intellectual connection and ideas. I want real passion, the kind that makes your skin jump when you touch and the kind that makes you have to hold back from kissing them. Not horniness. Horniness is different, that’s a void that anyone can fill.

When D got back from his vacation, he told me he’d been accepted to the boarding school. That was the trigger.

The situation, our interaction, has become frantic. We need to be together, with the weeks we have left, and his absence in the week before he leaves is killer. There was an underlying sense of the elephant in our relationship, but there was no way it could come out. D changed. He started blatantly flirting in front of S, or even behind S’s back. He made crude remarks, which was very out of character for him. And then, everything changed this past saturday night, at D's birthday party.

I’ve been drunk with D before, but it was freshman drunkenness, and it was light and I got so affected so fast that I just passed out.
I wonder what would’ve happened if we had gotten drunk together earlier in the year.

We were sitting on the couches outside, being drunk and therefore hooking up with people, me with S, D with S’s ex from last year (oh, the irony). Then it stopped, and the ex left and somehow I found myself in D’s lap, almost crying with him about his leaving. Then a conversation happened, one that I can’t share with anyone, one that I can’t think about without crying, and one that I need to talk to D about (we haven’t spoken since) or else I feel like I’m going to combust. The conversation turned to promises of skype every night, and not to forget him. Then it became a “if you weren’t with S--I won’t be with him forever-- We have time--Someday--Don’t tell S this, ever--When I get back, be there for me--Promise me you’ll remember this conversation” kind of conversation.

We separated, after pinky kiss promising and swearing on our souls. And then proceeded to hookup with a pair of exes, numbing the pain with more alcohol and another body.

I feel like I sold my soul to the devil. I’m not sorry.

I should’ve known, and recognized what this was the whole time. But I didn’t. And the saddest part for me is the “We have time”. It’s the fact that this beautiful thing, even our friendship, in a way, is being put on hold and taken away by the distance between us. I can’t live without him, and we need to figure out how to make 2,000 miles smaller.
But it’s sad, it’s so sad, that we’ve finally figured everything out at the worst possible time. It’s sad that we have to wait. It’s sad that two years is a long time, and that so much changes in two years. Who knows if I’ll even remember this conversation then. ......who am I kidding, of course I will.

A friend’s reaction to this crisis was “That needed to happen, because it’s the truth, and let’s be honest, you’re meant to be together”.

Scratch that, two friends have told me we’re meant to be. And that we’re good for each other.

Not what I needed to hear.

I read arecently, about rationality and romance.
“We’ll end up perpetually convinced that there is something more logical, more timely, more perfect. By the time we recognize our flawed rationale, it may be too late”.

So I don’t know what I’m going to do. I have to see and talk to D before he leaves (maybe not see him, that’s too much and I don’t trust him, or myself, right now) to talk about what happened that night. I need the closure, because right now my head is spinning and I can’t deal with it.

I love my best friend, who I’ve probably loved for awhile, and we are ridiculously meant to be in some way shape or form. But it’s like the shoe that’s perfect but is too big right now, if we were together now we’d end up killing each other and regardless of that, I’m with his best bro AND he’s leaving the state.

I really don’t know what to do. I don’t want to stop being friends with him, but it’s not fair to anyone to almost have an emotional relationship with one person and a physical relationship with another.

We both don’t love ourselves, and this poses many larger problems that I don’t want to think about right now because I’m 15, and I’m young, and I have found a connection with a person that I am certain will never be able to completely disappear.

Now that I’ve realized what love is, and that I’m in love, I want to tell the world. I want to climb on top of the roof of my school and shout “I LOVE HIM”. It’s a bubbling, beautiful secret inside of me that’s slowly rotting me away from the inside. It’s not healthy that the seconds we’re not together I feel like dying, and his absence now is hurting, and that I know once we see each other again or even see each other through the screen of Skype we will both feel whole again. That’s not healthy.

I have to breathe, and learn to give up some control here. I have a boyfriend, who I will not stay with forever, but whom I don’t want to hurt. And I have my best friend, who has been with me through thick and thin, and who is leaving, which is so horribly sad to me but I do know I’ll be friends with D for the rest of my life.
If something is meant to happen with us, it will. It can’t right now. And that’s sad.

[basilandthyme]

At chance of an abbreviated version?

[lblue]

Lol yeah. In the moment that seemed short (there's alot of history haha).

My best best best guy friend of 7 years is someone I care about very much and we have a very intense connection.
I'm currently dating one of his best friends, and it's kindof a he-asked-me-first situation. I like my boyfriend and care for him alot but I've been finding that he doesnt fulfill me intellectually or emotionally, and I don't have the same chemistry that I have with my best friend.
The thing is, the best friend is moving to a boarding school
And this has made him alot more open about his feelings, and we had a drunken confession of love and promises to be together when I'm no longer with my boyfriend and when he comes back from boarding school.
This talk made me realize how much I do love my best friend, and we both know nothing can happen right now but it's very sad for both of us, because it almost feels meant to be.
I don't want to hurt my boyfriend, or lose my friendship, because it's such a big part of me. But I do want something with my best friend in the future, and I've finally realized that.
I'm confused though, and I don't want to have a long distance emotional affair.

[michelle23]

Break up with your bf. Your heart is not in it. Be on your own for awhile and decide if you really want your friend or if he would just be a rebound.