LemonMelon
More 5G Than Man
I don't post in here all that often anymore because I feel like I've reached a point in my life where I'm too uncertain about my own daily affairs to really offer much certainty or reliable advice to anyone else. And calling attention to my life isn't really necessary: I'm not overjoyed, I'm not sad, I'm just living one day at a time right now. However, one situation has been weighing on me very heavily over the past few months in particular, and I wanted to get down on paper why that is. I'm not sure I'm looking for advice, but I post everywhere on this forum, and if I'm coming across as a bit of bastard over the next few days, I want you all to know what's bothering me.
This is going to be tl;dr to the extreme, but I'm not going to pretend as if this post isn't a therapeutic exercise.
So, I have this friend (no, he's not me), henceforth known as Kyle (yes, that's his real name), and we've known each other for...hmm...12 years now? Dates get fuzzier not only as you get older, but also as you distance yourself from them. The point is, I've known him for most of my life, he's always been someone to cheer me up, someone to rely on when I need a person to talk to about whatever.
The thing is, lately, he hasn't been particularly reliable. I came back to Maryland to spend Christmas with my family, and he was a part of that. He always told me that he felt as if I were his older brother (he's a few years younger than me; it's never really mattered), and he's spent so much time with my family. Weekends over at the house, hours and hours spent playing video games, writing music together, talking about girls, talking about women. He was truly my best friend for about a solid decade. But, this whole time I've been home, he just hasn't been there. We exchange a few texts every day, but he's never around long enough to keep a conversation going. He never answers my calls.
His excuses ultimately amount to him just needing to spend time with his family, which is terrific. I know that when I'm away from my own parents, I'll have days when all I want to do is get in my car, drive back to Maryland, and give them both a hug and let them know I'm alright. He'll miss them terribly when he leaves home. I understand. But then there are the times he just appears to be ignoring my messages or just simply not initiating any sort of conversation. It's become increasingly rare that he calls me on his own accord, and this exact situation replicated itself last time I went home, back in August.
This has forced me to confront some truths/possibilities I've been denying for a long time.
1. I can be extremely clingy. I like to pretend I don't give a shit about what people think, but when it comes to people I care about, I can succumb to it. And when I was a kid, I had a history of holding onto friends far longer than I should have. I was always the one to make the calls, I was always the one to set up times to hang out, and I was, frankly, always the one to be taken advantage of.
2. He may just not care about our relationship anymore. It happens. Maybe my time away in which I only talked to him about a dozen times in 6 months extinguished the last of it. The thing is, we hung out for a while the eve of my departure to Indiana, and I've never seen him so shaken by something. Hell, I haven't seen him cry in years, but that night he came awfully close.
3. Maybe we've just grown apart. He's younger than I am, runs in different crowds, and our interests are a little different now. We still have a lot in common, and have a great time when we see each other, but if he has friends he's closer to now, I can't blame him.
So, what can I do? Leaving someone that you care about, someone you've treated as if they were family is never easy but it's inevitable. What complicates things is that, stupidly, I asked him to be Best Man at Ashley and I's wedding. On top of leaving on Friday with only the crappiest of goodbyes, I also need to take him out of the wedding party before then. It pains me to do it, but this is bullshit. He can't be counted on, and he doesn't seem to care much about it, elated though he was over the invitation.
The greater implication of this, however, is that I just need to move on from my life here in Maryland. Kyle is merely a depressing symbol of how little reason I have left to be here. My heart is back in Indiana, and my life is moving forward there as planned. But I can't help but be greatly saddened by all of it. I lost my recording equipment with the move, and I won't be able to move forward in music for quite some time. I'm losing someone I considered my best friend for many years. I have no intention of returning; soon, I'll be married, and, in effect, I'll have traded one best friend for another, someone who does care very deeply for me and whom I love very much. It's my gain. Just kind of bummed about how crappy things are ending here.
This is going to be tl;dr to the extreme, but I'm not going to pretend as if this post isn't a therapeutic exercise.
So, I have this friend (no, he's not me), henceforth known as Kyle (yes, that's his real name), and we've known each other for...hmm...12 years now? Dates get fuzzier not only as you get older, but also as you distance yourself from them. The point is, I've known him for most of my life, he's always been someone to cheer me up, someone to rely on when I need a person to talk to about whatever.
The thing is, lately, he hasn't been particularly reliable. I came back to Maryland to spend Christmas with my family, and he was a part of that. He always told me that he felt as if I were his older brother (he's a few years younger than me; it's never really mattered), and he's spent so much time with my family. Weekends over at the house, hours and hours spent playing video games, writing music together, talking about girls, talking about women. He was truly my best friend for about a solid decade. But, this whole time I've been home, he just hasn't been there. We exchange a few texts every day, but he's never around long enough to keep a conversation going. He never answers my calls.
His excuses ultimately amount to him just needing to spend time with his family, which is terrific. I know that when I'm away from my own parents, I'll have days when all I want to do is get in my car, drive back to Maryland, and give them both a hug and let them know I'm alright. He'll miss them terribly when he leaves home. I understand. But then there are the times he just appears to be ignoring my messages or just simply not initiating any sort of conversation. It's become increasingly rare that he calls me on his own accord, and this exact situation replicated itself last time I went home, back in August.
This has forced me to confront some truths/possibilities I've been denying for a long time.
1. I can be extremely clingy. I like to pretend I don't give a shit about what people think, but when it comes to people I care about, I can succumb to it. And when I was a kid, I had a history of holding onto friends far longer than I should have. I was always the one to make the calls, I was always the one to set up times to hang out, and I was, frankly, always the one to be taken advantage of.
2. He may just not care about our relationship anymore. It happens. Maybe my time away in which I only talked to him about a dozen times in 6 months extinguished the last of it. The thing is, we hung out for a while the eve of my departure to Indiana, and I've never seen him so shaken by something. Hell, I haven't seen him cry in years, but that night he came awfully close.
3. Maybe we've just grown apart. He's younger than I am, runs in different crowds, and our interests are a little different now. We still have a lot in common, and have a great time when we see each other, but if he has friends he's closer to now, I can't blame him.
So, what can I do? Leaving someone that you care about, someone you've treated as if they were family is never easy but it's inevitable. What complicates things is that, stupidly, I asked him to be Best Man at Ashley and I's wedding. On top of leaving on Friday with only the crappiest of goodbyes, I also need to take him out of the wedding party before then. It pains me to do it, but this is bullshit. He can't be counted on, and he doesn't seem to care much about it, elated though he was over the invitation.
The greater implication of this, however, is that I just need to move on from my life here in Maryland. Kyle is merely a depressing symbol of how little reason I have left to be here. My heart is back in Indiana, and my life is moving forward there as planned. But I can't help but be greatly saddened by all of it. I lost my recording equipment with the move, and I won't be able to move forward in music for quite some time. I'm losing someone I considered my best friend for many years. I have no intention of returning; soon, I'll be married, and, in effect, I'll have traded one best friend for another, someone who does care very deeply for me and whom I love very much. It's my gain. Just kind of bummed about how crappy things are ending here.