wayward's eve

“These are all moments where you felt deeply, and the pain was too uncomfortable to process, so you stored them in your mind’s basement, the sub-conscience.” - Jacob Winograd; “Undone”.

  I really can’t recall how it escalated as dramatically as it did, but I do remember being too ashamed to talk about this topic for a long time so I blocked it from my memory as soon as it died down. I tucked this situation away so far at the bottom of my mind that it would be hard to reach, that door has not been opened until now so this is my first time publicly discussing it since it’s near the anniversary of the incident. Even to this day, it’s still difficult for me to speak about this so be patient with me if it seems derailed here and there.

  Two days before we entered the new year, the Christmas gift I provided for my best friend started to malfunction. Coincidentally, I had the same thing so I offered to exchange hers with mine so I could get it fixed for her. As she grew frustrated with the gift, she started to also grow frustrated with how the possible solutions that I was providing to her weren’t working as well. Out of the blue she blurted out: “I didn’t even want this anyway”, this had offended me at the time because I went out of my way to get her this special gift (that happened to be used). Because of that, an argument ensued between the both of us. I asked her again just to bring me the gift back (so I could fix it), and she finally agreed. I remember as she was driving over to my house to bring it back, I had to walk around my place about a dozen times to finally cool off. I was thankful that it was cold that night so I could feel my heart rate start to slow down, asking myself questions like “How did we get here?” & “Why are we so angry at each other?” were going through my mind as I waited for her arrival. It was then that I acknowledged my role in this debacle between us and saw how I went too far, I got upset by her response and reacted to her energy so I was honestly prepared to apologize. Once I finally collected myself and cleared my head I was ready for her arrival thinking it was just going to be a fair exchange, only to have our friendship to take an unforeseen turn.

  When she arrived at my garage she did not appear alone, she brought her brother (for "emotional support") along with some tote bags. Inside the tote bags were various items I had provided her throughout the year, including her birthday and Christmas gifts. Not to mention she brought along this fury that was impossible for me to extinguish, she was raising her voice and I kept trying to get her to lower it but she felt the need to be heard. I was trying to calm the situation but she wasn’t having it, my biggest fear was having anybody else hear her… especially my mother. As she continued, it finally caught the attention of my mom and she stormed down to see what the commotion was about. After we both pleaded with my best friend to keep it down, she refused because she was finally releasing the frustrations she had with me for some time and she finally let it out. I saw our neighbor's lights start to turn on and I stopped trying to reason to her remarks, her brother supposedly came as a mediator but he failed to do so because he didn’t stop her from screaming. My mother begged me to go back inside, as soon as she said that my brother stormed out because to see what the yelling was about because he thought I could’ve been in danger. He didn’t understand why she was responding the way that she was, but he understood that she was furious but didn’t know why. It was at this point that I was humiliated that it came to this, my mom finally pulled me inside the house and I was so embarrassed by her actions that I started to tear up. I was apologizing to my mother because I couldn’t defend my best friend's actions since it was out of her character, she could tell I was hurt by what was happening. As I was listening to her speak to my brother, she was saying things like “You don’t think I don’t care for you? You don’t think I don’t love you?!” Shortly after she said that is when she finally left, I apologized to my brother for being involved (and thanked him) & for her actions as well. I honestly don’t know if it needed to go that far, but I remember it was extremely difficult for me to sleep that night.

  My mother called her the next day to settle what went awry between us and it wasn’t properly resolved that day, but we both came to an agreement the following day. Ever since that night, I haven’t brought it up since that night is a very sensitive area for me to revisit to the point where I never want to bring it up again. At the time it was the ugliest moment of our friendship and the mere thought of it aches my heart to no end because I thought it would become the end of us and being reminded of it terrified me. That feeling felt very real to me, and I was afraid of anything like that to happen again. I admit that I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did when she talked about the gift, I was determined for her to be a better artist using this new instrument and I was so excited for her to have it that I knew that she would appreciate it. Forcing it on her was not the right approach to it at all, I did not consider if she would appreciate it or not and assumed she would love it off the bat so I wholeheartedly apologize for that. During the feud she wrote me an email mentioning something along the lines of me not labeling her as my girlfriend, this was something I was considering to give it a try as well until I saw how she responded to another situation with someone else. I brought up this situation ONE LAST TIME to her and it was to finally reveal to her how that night affected me, I haven’t brought it up since and I honestly kept my word… until today.  I honestly thought that we buried this and we could put this behind us, until she brought it up again.

The title is a play on an entry I did based on how my best friend’s family and I never saw eye to eye called “wayward ave.” some maybe 5 years ago, it would be the last time I would speak about her family publicly in years (minus “full house”).