What does one do when disappointment among friends looms over a friendship like a tower from a horror novel?

I’m hurt, she’s hurt, neither one of us is really speaking to the other; unless you count text messages that are pleasant enough but feel hollow and distant, like one of those old radio shows from the 40’s.

I’m sure she feels I let her down. I didn’t mean to…But meaning to do something and not doing it are worlds apart when feelings are involved. She probably felt ignored. She should have understood, I said to myself while my nagging conscience clucked.

I should have called her up and let her bitch at me, but I didn’t. I didn’t pick up the phone because I needed to be selfish and because I was a chicken-shit. Because truth be told I hate confrontation. Fighting with her (something we’ve never done in the 12 years I’ve known her) would only make me feel worse. I couldn’t allow myself to feel any worse.

In the swirl of a homecoming that was much too short, I was hanging on to a happiness, that for duty’s sake, would take he, who I hold most dear, away from me for another year. I was trying my best to drown out the sadness and depression that lay beneath my fleeting happiness.

Could she not see the hollow light in my eyes? I wondered on a most special day.

I thought she’d understand. I was wrong. She couldn’t possibly understand what I was feeling-I shouldn’t have expected her to.

We’ll figure things out once he’s gone. I thought. I was sure she’d call and ask how I was doing, on the day my Airman flew away.

She didn’t. Was this my recompense? I failed her. She failed me. It’s so stupid really, the dumbest stalemate in history.

Now, nearly a month has gone by.

Did we expect too much from each other? I love her like my own sisters, she stands high on a platinum pedestal, one reserved only for the most deserving of friends, and there she’ll remain.

Yet now there is this thing–casting its shadow on our friendship.

I can’t help but feel my own disappointment in her. Part of me feels like an ass for even feeling this way, but I do. There are some days I feel like I’m hanging off a ledge on that dark tower with only my fingertips to keep me from falling, I dare not glance down, for fear she may not be there.

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M - if you read this. You are one of the best friends a person could have. xo

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Author’s note:

This has been weighing heavily on me. I’ve wanted to write about it, but for what-ever reasons I hadn’t. Then this writing prompt for Write On Edge’s “RemembeRED” series was posted. The topic was friendship. That’s all the nudge I needed.

image: this dude on deviant art ->http://adriandierigl.deviantart.com/