“friends”

“I still want to be friends”

“We could still be friends”

“I do think you’re great though, I’d be down to be friends”

Breakups are a funny thing. We spend some time really getting to know someone in different ways than we would just a platonic relationship. We grow attached to their personality, their charisma, their charm; only for it to be taken away from us at a moments notice without any sort of warning. Only to be met with, “I think you’re great though, we can still be friends”. – oof…there it is.

Let me ask you something though. If I’m so great why do you not want to date me?

I have been the girlfriend and I have been the “friend” and going from girlfriend to “friend” only puts off the mourning until later when you’ve grown so sick of lying to yourself that you’ve harbored resentment towards that person. Now, all that’s left are coldness, loneliness and the feeling that you really are not good enough for anyone. it’s vicious and we need to learn to stop putting ourselves in situations that get us to these points. And when I say position, I mean the mentality.

Sure I could be your “friend” but that would only get us so far. I could put a smile on my face, tell you everything is “totally cool” and stuff down that pit in my stomach that wants to explode.

I could entertain the idea that being your “friend” is the best way to help the mourning period and that I am “in total control” of my emotions and how I am feeling. I could answer the half-hearted obligatory text messages that make me feel like “you still care about me” while ignoring the obvious fact that I very well know you’re just doing this to somehow prove you’re not a complete asshole. I could say yes to that one-time-after dinner you will be “so down” to go to, but conveniently, suddenly take me up on my offer to split the bill.

I could reign in all my urges to want to hold your hand, rub the back of your neck while you drive and kiss you at the end of the night, preparing myself for the definitive and concrete absence of the one thing that separates a friendship from a relationship. And to top it off, I could sit on my bed, staring at my phone that one night you finally decide to not text me to see what I’m doing, conjuring painful scenarios in my head of you out with some other person you’d rather kiss instead of me.

I could do all of that but I would be fooling myself for the hundredth time.

Dating is an amazing thing. You learn the typical routines these strangers abide by just to see if they’ll make it past the first few rounds to see if it will work out for their benefit. But you also learn a great deal about yourself in the process.

You learn how much you can actually take, how much you’ll tolerate, and for how long. You figure out that after however many tries, your heart can only hear those words so much and your mind can only allow you to entertain those ideas just the same.

So, yea, I could be your “friend” but I refuse to do that to myself again. I refuse to drag out the pain and become a cold, hollow shell of a person towards another human being, who I probably will never see again. So yea, I could be your “friend” but quite frankly, I really just don’t want to.

And, yea you’re, right, I am great.