This is a diary that's been brewing for a while, that I wasn't sure I was going to publish. I thought I'd try putting it out there.
In the fall of 2013 I wrote a diary about a beloved friend whom I'd lost that summer. About a year later I reposted it; for reasons I won't get into here this person was on my mind at that time, and I was still mourning the loss of that friendship.
Someone in the comment thread of the repost suggested that this person was not worth the anguish. Another agreed, saying, "this guy appears to be a user."
I was aware, like everyone else, of the term "user" but I never really used it or gave it much thought; I didn't think it applied, and certainly not to this person whom I'd loved, respected and admired so much for so long. I started poking around on the Internet to see what it actually means and how it's used. Starting with the Urban Dictionary, which defines it as "a person who uses a friend or acquaintance solely for the purposes of gaining a type of advantage," which I pretty much already knew. This person was not someone constantly asking me for favors or taking advantage of me or my resources for his own convenience or gain, so again I didn't think the word really applied. How could someone be "using" you if he never wants to see you or talk to you?
But then I looked at the other examples, which included (paraphrasing), someone who excludes you from activities with mutual friends, and ignores you when you are present at such occasions; who doesn't communicate with you or respond when you try; who is constantly making excuses for his behavior that you know are not entirely honest or reasonable; any or all of which, you would never do or think of doing to that person. All of those felt trenchant at the time. Perhaps "user" was just shorthand for a bad friend.
Intrigued, I Googled some more resources, mostly those silly pop-psych self-help websites about The Difference Between a Friend and a User or Are You a Bad Friend? and things like that. I tried not to take them too seriously, but over and over again the same themes and motifs came up:
- lack of reciprocity;
- lack of integrity;
- inability/failure/refusal to keep one's word, repeated broken or empty promises;
- inability/failure/refusal to communicate, or to acknowledge or respond to communication in a reasonable time and manner;
- inability/failure/refusal to acknowledge, let alone reciprocate, any kindness or thoughtful gesture;
- gratuitous fault-finding, assaults on the conscience;
- lack of accountability, refusal to take responsibility for any of the aforementioned behavior.
The more of this I read, the more uncanny it became that this was exactly what was going on. They were all describing this person, and what had been happening between us since at least the middle of 2012, to a proverbial tee. He never kept his word, to the point where anything he said beginning with "I will..." was a lie, and he had demanded immunity for every promise he'd broken and every promise he might break in the future. He had made communication impossible, and futile. He never acknowledged or reciprocated even the smallest gesture, let alone a few significant ones. He had assaulted my conscience, and retaliated for an imaginary slight in the cruelest manner possible. He could neither be counted on, nor trusted. And while he wasn't a "classic" user, in that he wasn't "using" me for anything, I couldn't help thinking: Maybe that's why I don't hear from him. Maybe that's why I don't merit an email reply or a return phone call. Maybe that's why he doesn't feel obliged to keep his word or speak honestly when he gives it. He doesn't want anything from me, and has nothing to gain from being acquainted with me, therefore he has no use for me, so why would he feel inclined or obligated to reciprocate friendship?
The conclusion was inescapable: This "friend" I had, this person whom I'd loved like a brother for half my life and more than half of his, is a user. And a liar. Dishonest, dishonorable, unreliable, untrustworthy, cruel, selfish and mean. A despicable person, with no integrity, and a truly terrible, terrible friend.
I had always told him, on those rare occasions when we were able to talk about all this, that his behavior made me sad, not angry. Sometime after I posted that diary for the second time, and read the comments, I decided that it did make me angry; for the first time I let that sadness turn to anger, just for a moment -- and that was all it took. To my eternal and everlasting shame, I discovered that between sadness and anger, anger feels a whole lot better. For one fleeting moment he was no longer my brother; I did not love him anymore, and allowed myself to see him for what he really is. That was all it took to get me to and through the last stages of grief -- anger and acceptance -- after being stuck on denial, bargaining and depression for so long. And I haven't gone back.
But now what?
Once I realized that this person is not my friend, let alone my brother, and I would not miss him or grieve for our friendship anymore, I deleted him from my contacts, un-friended him on Facebook, got rid of some photos, and did whatever else I could think of to help me forget. I avoided, and continue to avoid, the subject when talking to mutual friends, and to date have only discussed it with one such person who brought it up and pressed me on it. But I still think of him from time to time, and as the song goes, there's always something there to remind me.
If it's true that I still miss him, I miss the person I thought he was, and the friendship I thought we had, before I realized that that person and that friendship had ceased to exist at some point in 2012, if not sooner. The fact is he cut me out of his life three years ago, and was f***ing with my head thereafter until I finally realized and decided that it wasn't worth it anymore. Since the end of 2012 I'd been foolishly and shamefully trying to salvage a broken friendship while mourning its loss at the same time.
There's a lot about this that I'm ashamed of. As I mentioned, I'm ashamed of the fact that being angry with him felt so much better than being saddened by his absence. I'm ashamed of having clung to this broken, one-sided friendship for so long, made a fool of myself trying to hold onto it and save it, and letting that failure, futility and pain affect so many other aspects of my life, for the better part of two years. I'm ashamed of having needed this friendship so badly as to do all that. I'm ashamed that I allowed this person into my heart all those years ago, thought of him and treated him like a brother, like family, long beyond the shelf life of a friendship like this. I'm ashamed of having imposed on him a friendship that he no longer wanted or valued. I'm ashamed that I blamed myself, and that I stopped blaming myself. I could go on and on.
All I want now is to forget him, and forget about all of this. I know you can't really try to forget someone, because the very act of trying to forget is itself an act of remembering. And when you lose a loved one, you never really forget, even after you've been through the stages of grief. But the bizarre thing about this, as I discussed in the previous diary, is that this person hasn't passed on; this is a very different kind of loss. Even though I know -- and have to keep reminding myself -- that the person who was my friend and brother doesn't exist anymore, that's just a rhetorical rationalization; the reality is inescapable.
I doubt he will ever reach out to me; in fact I'm quite certain he won't. Whether he knows any of this, through our aforementioned mutual friend or by deduction, I don't know and will probably never know. Maybe it's just a matter of time. He's certainly not the first person I've ever stopped caring about, and he probably won't be the last. But as one of those silly pop-psych self-help websites said, paraphrasing, it's awfully hard to stop loving someone once you've started; it's like cutting off a limb, but the blood keeps flowing to that spot. This is a wound that may never fully heal.
So, now what?