A post from my journal of random thoughts:

C.  She was adorable, head full of curls and even shorter than me.  We were friends, sort of.  We were close enough to hug and talk—she was terrific to talk to—but even in the beginning, before things got weird, she wasn’t dependable.  She was the type of person who makes plans and then cancels at the last minute.  And to begin with, I understood that.  It was her senior year; she was super busy with papers and deadlines and whatnot.  I learned not to expect anything from her.  And then…

She was friends with M and his crowd too; really, she was their friend first and she and I only got close later on. 

I don’t recall exactly when it first happened; it must’ve been early on that final year for her, or maybe even the end of the year before that.  We’d had a party at M’s place.  Everyone was a bit tipsy.  Me less so than the others, probably, though I didn’t realize that at the time.  Anyway.  The deal was that if M and S (both guys) kissed that C and I would kiss.  They did and we did.  Apparently C even felt me up, though I don’t remember that.  I do remember her making out with me later that night though, in M's bed with M watching.

I’m not really the sort of person who can do casual relationships.  I ended up with a huge girl-crush on C.  It didn’t help that M thought it was totally hot to have me kissing another girl and encouraged it.  I was too shy/confused to talk about things with C and she never brought up the subject.  It was kind of an unspoken thing: that if she was drunk and M and I were there, we’d end up making out.

This wasn’t the best thing for my ego.   Or my relationship with M.

C and I became, I thought, pretty close friends.  I opened up to her a little more than I normally would, probably because we were intimate in other ways and I felt I could trust her.  She was instrumental in the break-up of M and me; she encouraged me to be myself, she supported me against the others.  She was angry over the way they treated me, she said.  She confirmed things that I had suspected but had laughed off, believing I was only being hypersensitive.

If she hadn’t been in the restaurant with us, if she hadn’t followed me to the bathroom, if she hadn’t witnessed the panic attack…I never would have stood up for myself enough to leave.  She left with me.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not blaming her for our break-up.  Not at all.  It would have happened anyway, eventually.

But she was there for me then.  She was there for me that summer, when I was picking up the pieces.  We were close, not physically, since that had stopped after M and I broke up, but emotionally.  I cried to her and she vented to me.  And then suddenly, she disappeared.  She celebrated my birthday with me and then I never saw her again.  We haven’t talked in over a year.

Lesson: don’t depend on anyone, because they will let you down.