Moving On...

Lindsey and I had been best friends since seventh grade – it would be fair to say that we were inseparable. We would spend countless hours at each other’s houses, and her dad occasionally even called me his daughter. When we arrived in high school, nothing really changed between us. We were still best friends, and everything seemed pretty much perfect – that is until the Fall of sophomore year of high school.
Lindsey had been dating Regi for about 3 years, and they had been having some problems by this point. Regi was very clingy, and Lindsey was getting annoyed with him so she broke it off. Lindsey started to hang out with another girl, Alyssa, who was gothic and hung out with people that I did not feel comfortable hanging out with. Even at lunch, Lindsey would go and sit with Alyssa and leave me with all my guy friends. I couldn’t understand what was happening between us, or what I had done wrong. She had always been my best friend, but now she wanted to hang out with someone she knew I did not want to be around. I knew that Alyssa was bad news. Eventually, I began to not really care if Lindsey didn’t sit with me at lunch. I had my guy friends who I decided I had much more fun with anyway. They knew how pissed I had been about her antics, and they let me vent to them pretty much everyday.
Lindsey and I were becoming very distant from one another, but she still thought that I was her best friend. She would come up to me in the hall and try to act like everything was fine between us. I couldn’t do that, so I would usually just blow her off or give one word answers to the conversation. Then one day she told me she really needed to talk to me about something. She seemed pretty serious so before homeroom we walked through the halls together, not really saying much. Then she stopped, looked at me, and pulled her sleeve up. There were cuts all over her wrist. I didn’t know what to do. We both started crying, and she asked me to promise not to tell anyone. Obviously, this is a promise that I couldn’t keep. She went to class, and I went to find Regi and my boyfriend, James. I told them and they were floored. All day in school I remember being very worked up and not knowing what I was going to do. That night, I went crying to my mom and dad and told them. My dad told me I needed to tell Lindsey’s dad, but I didn’t know how. I was a sophomore in high school – I didn’t know how to deal with something like this. So my dad called Lindsey’s parents, and they were shocked and upset with their daughter.
I knew that Lindsey was really changing for the worst when she told me about a concert she went to with Alyssa. It was some outdoor hardcore, screamo/gothic concert, and she met a guy there, Rich. I knew who Rich was. I had gone to elementary school and high school with him. He was always very disrespectful and a problem child throughout school. I even remember him one time throwing a chair at a teacher. Well, you can imagine my reaction when Lindsey told me that upon meeting him she had had sex with him in the woods at the concert. I was disgusted. I tried to tell her how wrong that is and how much of a dirt ball Rich was, but she wouldn’t have it. I wanted nothing to do with her anymore, and I think she was beginning to realize that.
The final straw was when I received a phone call from Lindsey’s dad asking if I knew where she was. She was missing. I told him that I she had told me she was going to Rich’s house after school, but I didn’t know where he lived. I began sobbing. Even though I was ready to move away from Lindsey, I still cared about her and I didn’t know why she was doing this to herself.
Before long, her parents ended up sending Lindsey to a hospital. She was there for a few weeks. She called me one day to let me know where she was and that she was fine and thanking me for being such a good friend. I accepted the apology then, but upon her arrival home we both knew that things had changed drastically between us. There was no way to repair everything that had happened. Lindsey really wanted to try to fix all the broken pieces of our friendship, but I just couldn’t do it. I needed to move on and get away from the relationship I had with her. Being around her and dealing with all the uncertainty and drama of our relationship had been mentally and emotionally draining on me. I couldn’t have imagined going through it all again, and that’s what I was scared of happening if I allowed myself to stay in the relationship.
To this day, Lindsey still tries to get in touch with me, and people who have talked to her tell me that she says how she wished me and her were still friends. It is hard to hear these things because of the closeness we once had, and the memories that we share. However, I know that I had to get out of my relationship with her to allow myself to grow and prosper in my own life.