Or at least, one of my best friends. I have learnt not to define one single person as your best friend because then it only takes one person to let you down for you to be alone. So now I have multiple best friends. But that doesn’t make the idea of losing one of them any less painful.
We became very close friends quite quickly, bonding over shared mental health issues, and then generally being idiots together. We both brought others in to the friendship and before long, we had a fully fledged friendship group.
He was the one I knew I could turn to about anything, the one whose house I could come to, just walk in (the door is always unlocked!), and curl up on the chair in the lounge as I have a meltdown and no questions would be asked.
When I was in England, we would talk all the time, and probably see each other at least once a week. Even when I moved to Australia (he was one of the very few people I told I was going to move), we were still in regular contact. But now…
I try and think about the last proper conversation we had over the phone, and it was 5 or 6 months ago. At the time I brought up how we weren’t talking regularly and how I kept reaching out but being shunned, and he said that he didn’t have anything to say, anything going on, anything to talk about, so what was the point in having a phone call.
He was sad, so I let him have it, but does it really matter in a friendship if you don’t have anything to say? Instead you watch a movie, or play a game. You talk rubbish rather than having a deep and meaningful conversation.
So I have continued to reach out, but it hasn’t got anywhere. A couple of times we have managed to organise a call, but when the scheduled time came, he didn’t answer. I’ve called at random times as well, but never an answer, return call, or even return message. Any messages I do send get minimal responses, if at all. I even prompted a game of Connect 4 with him over message, but he would play a move once a week, in comparison to others who played with me and we would finish a game in a couple of days.
I’m worried about him, so have reached out to others to check if they know if he’s okay or not. They all say they’ve communicated with him recently and he’s fine.
I guess it’s just me then…
For a couple of months now I have been thinking about saying something to him, and with the inability to actually get him on the phone, I decided to leave him a voice message. 45 minutes later and I had poured my heart out explaining how I felt and asking what was wrong.
Did I do something wrong? Did I upset him in some way? Am I not reaching out enough? Or is he just over and done with the friendship? Is he trying to phase me out?
That was 48 hours ago now, and I’ve not heard anything…
The thing is, I know he has at least ‘seen’ the messages. So one of two things has happened…
He has seen that I have left him multiple voice messages (I had made notes on what I wanted to say, and it turns out that when you cancel out of the audio message to checks notes, it stops the recording) and thought “Nah, I can’t be bothered to listen to those, I’m sure it’s nothing important”, in which case does that not tell me how much he values the friendship?
Or, he has listened to the messages and thought “Nah, I can’t be bothered with this. I am trying to phase her out, so if I just ignore these messages, she’ll eventually get the message”.
Neither of these is a happy ending for me…
So now I sit at my laptop, still feeling super sad, and trying to decide if I want to binge eat chocolate to quell my feelings of sadness, or starve myself and sit with the misery.