Sad Today

http://www.buzzfeed.com/nataliemorin/ways-your-best-friend-is-actually-your-significant-other

Browsing Buzzfeed today, I found this article.  It broke my heart completely.

Lora and I had this.  Our friendship wasn't deep.  It revolved around stupid things like joint hair appointments, trips to the mall, and chick flicks.  We didn't have deep or intelligent conversations like Kyle and I do, and we didn't share as much in common as Lora and Bryan did, but we got along well.

We baked together, I cooked delicious dinners and silly snacks (Nutella banana quesadillas were a favorite in our house), we did leave each other goofy notes, and when we stopped speaking and I removed the photos of her from my Facebook, I lost 600 of the 1000 photos on my page.  We took a lot of photos when we were together.

She knew all the dietary restrictions I have, which changed after my surgery.  She didn't have any, but I knew all of her favorite foods and made sure to cook them when she was upset (which was pretty much all the time).

It wasn't until this article that I realized something.  Our friendship may not have been deep (like my friendships with Kyle or Andy), but it was close.  It was superficial, but it was fun.  It was pretty much exactly as the article describes.

The aftermath is affecting me more than I would've expected, having dealt reasonably well with losing friends before, and I finally understand why.  Recovering from this is basically the same as recovering from a bad breakup.  Her betrayal of me stung the way it did because we were those kinds of friends.

Luckily, I still have very good friends in my life to remind me that not everyone is psychotic.  Trisha is doing the best she can for me while preparing for the birth of her first child (my "niece" Evelyn); Andy is always there for me when I need him, no matter what; and Kyle is trying his hardest to balance our friendship with dating Lora until things fall apart one way or the other.  Neither of us really believes our friendship is going to be the relationship that falls apart, so we're just trying to make things seem as normal as possible in an abnormal situation.

I still miss her, though.  I know it's stupid, after everything she's done to me, but I do and maybe always will.  I replay the situation occasionally and wonder what I could've done to change it.  I know the answer to that question is "nothing", but it still haunts me.

Hopefully, school will give me something else to think about and free my brain from the shackles she left behind.  Only five weeks left.

J