I miss my friend

Have you ever had a friend that you had to stop being friends with? When I was in middle school, I got caught shoplifting at the mall with my best friend. Her mom said she wasn't allowed to

hang out with me anymore. It crushed me. Well, I was grounded forever, so it's not like there was a lot of hanging out to be done, but we continued to have the same friends and classes together for the rest of school, but we stopped being friends. To this day I wonder how things could have been different had I made different decisions in life.

A few years after high school I met my new best friend through work. She had her first child just a few weeks after mine, so we had a lot in common. We worked together for about 2 years before we both moved on to other jobs, both of us eventually staying at home. (She works from home) Over the past 8+ years, we talked every day online and have been to countless birthday parties for our 7 total children. She ended up with 3 boys, me with 3 girls, then later a boy. :) We are both the youngest of 3, come from divorced parents, and like to complain about the same things. We're both sarcastic, snarky, and sometimes downright hateful. (Within reason-- mostly everything we did was for the sole purpose of getting a laugh)

Things should be great, right? I don't know if our break up was years of irritants building up and then exploding, or just us both being so stubborn and feisty and unwilling to compromise our opinions, and we just got each other on a bad day... But looking back, we'd been growing apart for so long. And I feel like I was holding on to our friendship for the sole reason that she was my best friend.

I keep trying to write out what happened. What we argued about, how I felt... but I can't. You know how when you're a kid, it's totally cool for you to make fun of your brother or sister, but if somebody else does it you punch them in the gut? I think that must be how I am feeling right now. I know how I felt after our last fight; I know the hurtful things I said and the mean things I thought. To simply give you my side of the story feels wrong. It's not fair to her, even though she hates me right now. But honestly, I really miss my friend. I find myself drinking Diet Dr. Pepper and wanting so badly to tell her about the camper that we just bought. We always talked about going camping together.

Sometimes I think I should apologize to her and ask to be friends again. Nothing has changed though--I still feel the way I did when we fought, and she didn't back down from her stance either. Then I was mean, I said something hurtful just because she hurt me, something I knew would cut deep. I'm not proud of it, but I don't think we could ever be close again. Especially after seeing the things that she and her family said about me soon afterwards on Facebook. (How mature is that, really? haha) I know it's best for us to just part ways.

I feel especially stupid for blogging about this, but then again I was looking for something to write about. :) Writing is typically therapeutic to me, it helps me to organize my thoughts and release them. I don't know if I've necessarily gotten anywhere tonight, but I guess we will see.

P.S. I'm not too worried about that friend seeing this, she never really read my blog when we were BFFs, why start now? :P