Please…I’m lost

     Tonight, to my shock and horror and especially to my hurt and dismay…my best friend here at school…the person with whom I have identified with the most since probably freshman year…gave me a choice.

     She told me that she could no longer deal with my friendship with her ex boyfriend, someone who has hurt her deeply on more than one occasion for the past two years.  I sympathize with her…it is a cruel thing to play with someone’s heart, and he should never have done it to her.  I knew him before they dated, and even their coming together was wrought with tensions.  Lately, her sadness and depression have turned to anger towards him, and according to tonight that anger is starting to turn towards me. 

     If I cannot sever my connection with him, we won’t be able to live together next year, so severe is this problem.  She refered to it as a kind of betrayal of her, because it is-and unfortunately I know it is-causing her intense emotional upset.  If he were completely eliminated from the picture…she feels like she could get better, and I will not speculate as to whether or not this is avoiding the problem because I myself had to sever complete connection with and ex in order to relieve myself of the weight of emotional baggage that followed what we had been through.

     Unfortunately…she has, unintentionally, done the one thing I thought she never could do, and in doing so has betrayed me.  She has asked me to betray my nature, and deny my friendship to one who reaches out in earnest for it, and who has been there for me when I needed it.  This….is to be the conditions of our friendship. 

     I have always been the one to bend.  I have bent myself into any contorted shape that best fits the needs of those around me…and I am tired.  I didn’t want another conditional relationship…and this condition is breaking me apart inside.  He is like family to me…a brother who is far from perfect…but we look out for one another as much as we are able.  She is like family too.  We have been through a lot, and in many ways our brains run parallel in thought.

     But I can feel the divide looming over us, and I am scared to death of losing a dear friend who was one of few to really ‘get’ me.  But to keep her I have to let go of someone else who matters to me. 

     I am sick.  And I am tired.  I cannot breathe.  I have no direction. 

     I have been, for so long, the emotional dumping ground for other people’s burdens.  I am depressed too.  And now…no matter what happens…I will have to carve away someone from my heart….if it is him, it will be of my own doing, and in doing so I am a cruel and unkind person to him…while thoughtful to her.  If it is her, it will be because I could not make this choice-it is hard-and she will shrink away from me.  Then I am cold and dead to her, and nothing more or less to him.

    But either way…it feels like dying.

     I’m sorry I couldn’t fix it.  I’m sorry I can’t do the right thing.  I’m sorry…this was never the kind of betrayal I was prepared to shoulder. 

     My life is altered forever.

     How empty.