LATE NIGHT DRIVES
A meditation on old friendships
I hate being on the outside. Really, I fucking hate it. In fact, I hate them all, all my fake high school friends who will show up at my door in the middle of the night, when they know I won’t come out, because they’ve planned this moment between themselves but they haven’t planned it with me. I’m not a spur-of-the-moment kind of person. Maybe they resent me for it. They should quit that, if they do, because I resent myself enough (for it and for everything else) for all of us.
Lilian calls me, and then texts that I have a few minutes to come down or they’ll leave without me. I’m not even by my phone; it’s the one time of day when I’m actually elsewhere. I see the message an hour later. Who the hell knows where they are now. Oh, wait, I do, because I have their fucking locations.
All of them, playing this charade, refusing to acknowledge the unspoken: they just don’t like me all that much. I desperately wish one of them would just say it, so I knew the shaky ground I stood on.
Two of them are supposed to be my closest friends, if we untangle the web that bound us together. Really, the story practically writes itself. Andie, who I followed like a wet, lost duckling most of my high school years, with whom I did everything. I ran clubs with her, I took half my classes with her, I texted her for everything, I made her laugh louder than I’ve seen anyone else manage, I had those quasi-intellectual drunk-on-life conversations with her that she loves so much. She was brilliant, so incredibly hilarious, quick-witted and energetic and kind and sweet. She was my star. I orbited her, followed her in everything, and she’d sometimes forget to respond to my texts, and she’d sometimes abandon our club meetings, and none of that mattered because I loved her. Yes, I was in love with her. Maybe a part of me is still in love with her. Does that really surprise you, that I love so desperately and so whole-heartedly?
Andie replaced me with Lilian late into our junior year. We’d always been a group, there were maybe six of us girls, but Lilian and I never quite got along. That’s what hurt the most. Andie replaced me, over the span of that summer, with someone I couldn’t even form a triple with. She hadn’t even realized it, I don’t think. She might even have chalked up my avoidance to my own attitude, because I stayed away from Lilian, and I didn’t like doing the things the two of them enjoyed doing together. They went in for late night car rides to ice cream stands, and I just missed doing math problems on the board. Now, Andie and Lilian are inseparable—well, not now that we’re in college, but they text and call and are happy together. I’m not involved.
Then there’s Thea. Fashionable, chic, intellectual Thea. Moody, depressed, needy Thea. Thea, who came with me to the very same college, who is now my classmate, but who will stay in her room for days and brush off my plans because she’s overwhelmed or sad or whatever has gotten to her this time. I have been nothing but nice to her, I swear. I follow her when she wants to explore, when she has her moments of inspired intrusiveness and wants to grab takeout or go to a dance or do some other quick spontaneity that I so despise. Thea, with whom I went through the most traumatic event of both of our lives, barely two weeks ago. I have done everything I could for her, and she has done nothing in return. Because she can’t read me. Because she never bothered to learn. Not the way I’ve learned to read her like a dictionary. I know what every mouth twitch, every frown, every half sigh, and every little cut-off word means. I can tell instantly if she’s manically happy or drowning in her thoughts, if she’s tired or lonely or wants someone to run away with. I don’t always follow the cues, but that’s only ever out of revenge or apathy or anger, never because I didn’t see them. And I try. I try so fucking hard for her to like me, I swear I do. I didn’t mean any of the things I said above, I just say them because sometimes I’m fucked up; I adore her, I want her to be happy, I just want her to like me enough to let me into her life.
Neither Thea nor Andie cared enough to text me. Lilian did, and I already know she was driving, and that she doesn’t care for me at all. I can imagine the two of them laughing in the back seats, Andie reading Thea in a way she has long given up reading me, comforting her through these tragic times while I am left with table scraps and an empty, lonely bedroom. They couldn’t be bothered to text, not now or ever, because they were clearly checking their phones all day to plan this little escapade but they’ve both left me unread.
I stalk their mocking profile pictures on FindMy, and see that they’ve gone back to our old high school to reminisce. They had wonderful times there, I’m sure. I hated myself through the entire thing, but really, what else is new? It’s hard learning only afterwards that I made it four years without making a real friend.
I’m going to fucking die alone, and I’m going to deserve it.
I’ve never fit in, I know that well enough, but I learned recently, accidentally, that the three of them—Lilian, Thea, and Andie—have a group chat that is just the three of them. Yes, our group had a few other girls, but it was often the three of them plus me, the awkward fourth wheel who just barely made it in but who was still only watching through the lobby doors. It would be easier, maybe, if I were fully on the outside, because there wouldn’t be that hope, or that clear blazing sign that they don’t like me enough to let me in all the way. They want me standing in the in-between, watching, aching in my overwhelming loneliness.
When it all happened, Lilian and Andie texted Thea but not me. Thea and I were together, so I saw when their too-familiar profiles popped up in the chat. Thea didn’t mention to them that maybe they should text me, I guess. It never occurred to them to reach out either.
I hate them so much that it hurts sometimes. I bottle up all this frustration, every little hurt, and push it deep down. It festers in the cavity where my heart should be, into a white-hot anger that I never let out. I can barely look into Thea’s eyes sometimes. I genuinely can’t do it, can’t stand her at all, because when I look at her I see someone who is wounded and hurting openly in all the ways I work desperately to hide and yet somehow, they like her better than me. They adore her. They ask after her, they want her, and they don’t want me.
I’ll never be her, not now. I’ve already failed, failed all those years ago when I walled myself off from the world. Now I’m just reaping what I’ve sowed, a lonely girl in a withering meadow.
I want to scream to the world, Fuck them all! I don’t need anyone, not anyone at all. But we all know that’s not true. That’s never been true.
So maybe I’ll just whisper to the world, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’ll never be good enough. I hope they’re happy with each other, because they deserve all that I don’t. I hope they remember me sometimes, and that some of those memories are fond. I hope they bring me up once in a while, and giggle, oh yeah, Clara, I wonder what she’s up to, I wonder where she’s been. I hope that when they do, they don’t remember slowly letting go of my hand, letting me drift away into an ink-black sea. Instead, I hope they picture me choosing a different path, a path I made myself, and I hope in their minds they can still see me waving back at them as I walk into the sun.
Sorry it’s been a little while. Is it okay if I blame Life getting in the way, just this once? I’ve got a backlog of things I’ve written, though, so I’ll be consistent for a month or two, at least. I hope you stick around.