Wounds That Never Heal

I just came back from a walk by the lake, a secluded place that I often visit to introspect and calm down my senses. But today, it was different. I was in a state of emotional turmoil and even spending hours by the lake did not help. I figured I need a cathartic release and so, I fire up my laptop and start typing.

Here’s my story. This is about my relationship with a girl who was once very close to me. We went to the same school, but we were not friends then. It was only when we were in college that we started communicating through social media. At the time, she was about to graduate and I was in the penultimate year of my bachelor’s program. Soon, what started as casual conversations on social media developed into a sweet, sincere friendship as we got to know more about each other. She became my best friend; we held similar views about different things, had many shared interests, and I loved her candid and playful yet caring nature. We talked to each other for hours everyday, and I could talk to her about anything. Talking to her made me happy. Her presence made me feel whole as if she were a part of me that had been missing all my life. Over the next few months, I realized that I had fallen in love with her, but I was terrified of confessing my feelings because I didn’t want to jeopardize our wonderful friendship. Somehow, I gathered enough courage and professed my love for her. It turned out that she felt the same way and thus began our relationship.

By the time this happened, she had started working and I was in the final year of college. We were still best friends, and being in a relationship didn’t change much. We did have many common interests, yet we had very different personalities. She was talkative and expressive (atleast with me), and I was more of an introvert and not very good at making my feelings known. To me, the best thing about our relationship was that we grew closer and became more understanding of each other despite our differences. Long-distance relationships are difficult, but I fell more in love with her as months passed by. Yes, we had some stupid fights as all lovers do, but we could never stand not talking to each other for long.

It was all good, perfect. Until the end of February, 2015. Her father had been sick for a few days. She was going home next week to see him. She called me one night and informed me that her family members had booked a flight for her leaving next day. Apparently, there was an emergency, and she was worried. So was I, but I assured her everything would be okay. Upon reaching home, she found out that her dad had passed away last day. She didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye to him. She was devastated. I couldn’t bear to see her in that state, it was heart-breaking. Her dad was a good man, her role-model, and I had the utmost respect for him. Even though I never met him, his departure made me feel empty inside; it was a personal trauma for me too. I promised her that we would get through it together and made myself available to her whenever she needed me. I wanted to meet her in person, but she advised against it as her home was crowded with relatives over the next few weeks.

She used to call me whenever she needed someone to talk to about her dad. But after a few weeks, she suddenly became distant. I felt she needed some space. I still called her everyday, but now, she was avoiding me; our conversations became shorter and some days, she just made some excuse and didn’t talk at all. I became worried about her, and also our relationship. Whenever I voiced my concerns, she would get irritated and stop talking. One such day, she hung up the phone and broke up with me over text. This was extremely painful for me because I had still not recovered from the death of her dad myself. Also, I felt that she should have at-least called and discussed everything with me before making such an important decision. She owed me that much.

I tried to convince her. I called her a few times, but she never picked up. My world was falling apart. I never imagined she would do that to me. After crying helplessly for some time, I lost my patience and texted her that she must be cheating on me with a crush of hers she told me about a few months back. She then used this as an excuse to not talk to me for a few days. She said that her sister had seen our conversation and shown it to her mother and both of them were pissed at me. Now, I was not only sad about her dad and the break-up, but also felt extremely guilty. When she agreed to talk to me after a few days, she severely told me off for being so mean to her. Suddenly, she was the victim, and the whole conversation became about my mistakes. I ended up in tears and apologized to her. (In fact, 2 years later, I found out that her sister had never seen the conversation. It was just a ploy used by her to shift the blame on me so she could avoid the guilt of hurting me)

At the time, she still maintained that she wanted to be friends. In hindsight, it might just have been to suppress her guilt. I knew it was a bad idea, but I decided to stay because I didn’t want to leave her alone after her dad’s death (I never told her this); I loved her after all. She still talked to me about her dad, and I tried my best to support her. But now when I look back, I think that I failed as a friend because there were times when I let my emotions get the better of me and we fought, often saying hurtful things to each other. Somehow, things settled down over the next few months; there were no more fights and we became normal friends again.

A year passed, and I was still in love with her. She seemed to have recovered from the tragedy, and I decided to ask her out again. She refused, but we still remained friends. I tried to distance myself from her because I needed to get over it. Over the next few days, I became depressed because things were not going my way: I was extremely frustrated with my job, I loved a girl who did not love me back, and there were other serious personal issues. There were many built-up emotions, and I needed to talk to someone. I turned to her for help because she was still my closest friend. It was the first time that I sought her emotional support, and I was severely disappointed; she showed the least interest in helping me. I realized that she never cared about me. It was all just about her and her problems. We had a serious fight, and this time, the damage was permanent.

In retrospect, I should have realized long before that I was just her go-to guy. She used to call whenever she wanted to talk to someone, but she wouldn’t answer most of the times that I called her. I was naive, and my thoughts were clouded by emotions. It was, by far, the biggest mistake of my life.

She left me alone to deal with depression. Immediately after the fight, I quit my job. It seemed like everything was falling apart around me. I felt like giving up. I never told my family about these problems, because I was too embarrassed to talk about them. Nevertheless, they sensed that something was wrong and their love and support helped me through it. In a few months, I was on a path to rediscovering myself. I prepared myself to go abroad and pursue the next step of my career. I was focused on myself but deep inside, there still was a hole left by her, a friend that I loved and trusted so much.

When the time to go abroad came closer, I decided to contact her again. I wanted to be on good terms with her and forget all the bitter memories before leaving the country. Unfortunately, we ended up fighting worse than the last time.

One year later, here I am doing wonderfully well in my career, except there is still the emptiness inside me. It has been a very traumatic experience, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to fully recover from it. There are still nights when I wake up thinking about her dad, or wondering where I went wrong. To this day, when I need someone to talk to, she is the first person that comes to mind. But she’s not here, and I end up not talking to anyone. People say that time heals everything. But it has been three years now, and I still miss her so much. I never had any closure; I have no clue what happened. I don’t want to believe that she is a bad person, but can’t say for sure. I have a lot of questions, and there is only one person that has the answers. But she is not in my life anymore. I wish that I could give her back everything that I have of her, including the painful memories.