Relationships are a battle…

…No…

A war. 

There are hundreds, thousands of people fighting beside you, against you – but you only know the ones that stand closest to you. Or you think you do. For a moment, you are rushing onto the battlefield with your brothers, but in the smoke, you don’t know whose barrel is whose. When the smoke clears, your brother, who charged into countless battles with you, holds you at gunpoint. He looks into your eyes, the same eyes that comforted you for the loss of your captain, the same eyes that twinkled with laughter and joy, the same eyes when he spits on your face and calls you a traitor. Only the winners get to tell the story. I’m afraid, this time, I will die a traitor, with a dagger sticking out from my back. 

~~

During Fall Quarter, I told myself that I was going to take a break from writing so that I could be sane during Winter Quarter as I take four classes (though one of them is fake) and participate in four clubs (one of them being my band that never meets – sorry, guys). But you know what? Shit kept on happening to me.

Last summer, I was listening to the “Psychology of Your 20s” podcast, as Nerdwesterners do, when I stumbled upon episode 223 – “Why are female friendships so hard?”

WHAT!? What are you talking about?!

At that time, I had different friend groups and close friends, and I was vibing. And then Fall 2024 hit me like a motherfucking cybertruck.  

In college, if you’re down to make friends, you can make them very quickly. The intensity of seeing someone every day (hail the Willard fourth floor bathroom!) just because you live in the same dorm, the serendipity of running into someone in the dining hall, the high commitment clubs that you can join – all are brewing grounds for intense, deep, emotional friendships. So much time. Together. 

On such an accelerated timeline where you could pull all-nighters just chatting, truths are revealed quickly. And among them? Ugly truths. Commitment issues (yes, they exist in friendship), lack of reciprocity, teasing that goes too far, developing feelings (GOD, I hate this one), and flat out lying – they all begin to riddle your friendships. Someone you thought you could trust spreads your secret. Someone you considered your closest friend would not cry on your shoulder. Someone you put on a pedestal doesn’t even bat an eye at you. 

My mistake was believing that a fast friendship meant a healthy friendship. Of course, sometimes, fast friendships do signify high levels of compatibility. But in my experience, only time will tell. Time will tell if you have similar communication styles, whether you’re conflict-avoidant or someone who brings up issues as boundaries are crossed. Time will tell how much of a priority you are to each other or if you can adequately support each other.

Jemma Sbeg, the host of the podcast that instigated this discussion, talked about how, over time, friends discover whether or not their expectations match. You could be asking for too much (or feel like you’re asking too much), or you could be expecting or receiving not as much as you deserve or desire.

Last Fall Quarter, I managed to do both.

I discovered, for the first time, how to deliberately give up on people. Of course, I’ve had friends who drifted away over time and space. But it was not before many hour-long phone calls over months or years. When thousands of minutes and thousands of miles separated us from our last shared memory, we began to fade away in importance, in priority. We forgot how much joy we brought each other, how many stomach-clutching, I’m-going-to-pee-myself laughs we shared over the silliest shit. Other times, other people gave up on me. I wasn’t given the first move. I wasn’t given an explanation. I cried, and then I buttoned myself back up.

But me giving up on others was a new concept. It was my board, and I was a white pawn making the first move to take control. 

When I was asking for too much, giving up looked like fatigue. I was tired of asking for promises that couldn’t be kept. I was asking for the same energy to be put into the friendship but through my friendship love languages – reaching out, words of affirmation. Was it too much to ask for? When we weren’t in the same literal room, I always doubted my priority in our friendship. Why was I always the one making the plans? Did she not want to hang out with me? Her absence gnawed a pit deep inside me that none of her loving words could fill in. Yet everything was different when she was right beside me. When she was here, she was 100%. I had never fallen so deeply into a friendship. I trusted her with everything – except how she wasn’t enough for me. I wanted her to want me as much as I wanted her. (I SWEAR this is platonic…sort of. The gay always gets me a little. Or a lot. Eh.) But it wasn’t in her nature. Maybe if I had more time to be friends with her, we (she) could have put the work in. But I guess an old dog can’t learn new tricks.  

Giving up when I was receiving less than I deserved looked like pain. And then it looked like violently drowning. At first, it was because she didn’t have time for me anymore. Our quality time plummeted, and I was left so thirsty for her (again, NOT GAY). Usually, working on something over time makes something better – the more hours you spend painting, the better you get. But this time, spending more time in this friendship just allowed for the ugly truths to bubble to the top. The cutting, derisive statements and the excessive physical touch. Physical touch that crossed the borders of friendship. NOT GOOD FOR GAY BRAIN. I began to wonder if it meant anything, and it planted a seed in my head. Someone that I never considered (I mean, all my friends are queer. What’s one more?), began to confuse me. But at the end of the day, I knew that it wasn’t what I wanted, and I felt ashamed that I even thought of it. It’d be like fucking a sibling. (Note to self: This is not the film Godless.) So I drew the Iron Curtain. I needed to stamp out these incestuous thoughts from my mind. I needed distance. 

Anyway, she wasn’t a great friend to begin with. Hurting my feelings left and right. It felt like the healthiest thing I could do for myself, setting a boundary. Telling her to stop. And I hoped that she wouldn’t notice me slowly slipping away. 

But then all of a fucking sudden, she hosed ice cold water on my face by demanding the truth. What was the truth? What could I afford to tell her while saving face? I told her half-truths. And I also lied to her face. I told her it had nothing to do with feelings and everything to do with hurt feelings. I told her that I needed to protect myself, and she demanded that I fix it. To fix our friendship. Because she missed it and she wanted it back, as if one person could make or break a friendship. I knew she was not going to drop it, so I plotted my “fake it till you make it” campaign. 

#WeAreGonnaBuildAWallSecretly! 

When I was home and I heard keys jingle outside the door, I steadied myself. I prepared the appropriate tone of voice to exclaim a hearty “Hello!” to welcome her back to our friendship-anxiety-inducing apartment. I bit my tongue every time I wanted to spit at her – spit a spiteful comment about how self-centered I found her, how much emotional and mental space she took up, how I was suffocating in my own home. Drowning in taking care of her anxiety, of her worries, of her expectations of what our friendship should be. Why was she expecting it to be the same as when we first met? How is that fair or even realistic? She was holding on to this rose-colored version of our friendship and dragging me (bound and gagged, but not in a fun way) along in the muddy ditches. 

But sometimes, I wondered if I was lucky that I had someone who was holding on to me so tight. Because it is so easy to drift away. I felt Jemma, the host of the podcast, poking fun at me when she said that communication is the most important factor in the longevity of a friendship. The problem was that I didn’t have my head in the game. I didn’t know if I wanted to have my head in the game. 

Drowning prompts a violent reaction – anything to get out alive. I had come to resent her through tsunamis of rage that hit my shores over and over again. Destroying every joyous memory we shared. 

Now, here I am, safe and sound out of that relationship and reflecting on that saga. I never ended up talking to her because I decided that it wasn’t worth it. I decided that whatever friendship could have been salvaged was not worth fighting for. Truly, I was and am emotionally burnt (out) from that relationship. Looking back, if I had been able to verbalize everything that I’m reflecting on now, maybe we wouldn’t have gotten to this point. Because now I’m completely disconnected from her, and she doesn’t know my side of the story at all. And it’s too late for that. 

Through weeks of losing my appetite, not being able to sleep and even having my period come late, I now know just how hard female friendships can be. It’s a constant battle between trying to find safety and fleeing from the people who give the illusion of safety. It’s safe to say that I have much more heartbreak to experience. I can’t fucking wait. 

~~

Or perhaps I find out that my brother is a traitor, but I keep it to myself, waiting for the right time to strike. I’m not a good liar nor a good spy. I’m a soldier, not a general. I don’t know how to play mind games, how to manipulate others to get what I want. But I’m tough and can show no mercy when it counts. 

We are alone, hunting for food in the forest. I’m hungry, he’s hungrier. When he tries to take me for a fool again, I lash out.

“I won’t let you get away with this!” My hand goes to my sword.

He seems to cower and backs away from me. “Please, just let me go.”

When I draw my sword, he crouches on the forest floor with his hands pressed together over his head. “Please, I’ll do anything! Give you anything!” But I remain firm, sword at the ready. 

Seeing that I will show no mercy, he strikes. He jumps up and lunges at me with a small concealed dagger. I try to parry his moves, but my large sword slows me down. I’m all brawn and no brains, I chose to be tough at the wrong time. I am about to be a tree falling in the middle of the forest with no one to witness. 

Anything could have killed me. Anything but my brother. 

I drop my sword, turn around and run. I run with three words in mind: Don’t look back. Nothing about my brother is salvageable. If I had looked back, I would have seen him cast aside his mask for a face made of scales, one large eye and a gaping hole between his chin and neck for a mouth. I hope that is what the others will see him for: a monster that will stop at nothing to get what he wants. 

Perhaps, when I make it back to the camp and look back, my brother is just a boy again. Not a monster, not even close. Just someone who thought they were doing the right thing. But every fairy tale has its winners and losers.