'you said some things to me i have had trouble forgetting about,
there ain't no sense in holding onto grudges forever that's the simple way out.'
when following up a blog that opened with lyrics, i like to keep synergy by following it up with the same artist.
'so what?' exclaimed my friend to one of my last posts, accompanied by an eye roll.
thanks man. at least he's reading.
a few posts ago, i went through the mechanics of a friendship ending fight. this is something that everybody already knows about, as my friend so delicately pointed out. everyone has had at least one best friend forever (BFF as the kids initialize) that hasn't quite lived up to the second 'f,' which is interesting in and of itself, but as Chuck Klosterman delicately points out, 'nothing is ever in and of itself.'
was my situation particularly unique? yes. and so was yours. it is similar to break ups. your pain on some level is completely your own, and nobody will understand exactly how you feel. but on some level, you thinking that your pain is entirely your own is a load of shit, because everyone has been there. everyone has lost a best friend to some degree. even if losing them made them just a regular 'friend' instead of a 'best friend,' there is a shift in the dynamic of how things work. either way it kind of sucks.
i could tell you what was unique about my situation, but a) i've already done and b) there are only really two other people in the world who care about the specifics, and the likelihood of either of them reading this blog is suspect-neutral.
what you may care about is the dichotomy of nobody and everybody knowing nothing about and absolutely everything about how you feel. chances are, you were wrong, the other person was wrong, you think the other person is 'more wrong' but maybe realize that the temptation of pointing the blame ultimately doesn't matter. i don't know if this validates or invalidates every fight--i only know that it is formulaic. but i think the fact that fights are this traceable is a good thing, it means at the least it's natural. and a lot of happy people have gone through the natural cycle of losing a best friend.
at a certain stage in our lives, the petty precedents held by our sixth grade society members disintegrates even if the behavior doesn't. which it probably hasn't in reality--we just find a more mature guise and a higher depth of things worth ending friendships over. whether you are friends, acquaintances, brothers, sisters, parents, best friends, coworkers, boys, girls, men, women--these boundaries fade into just being people. that's kind of beautiful. fighting is one of the few processes that aren't clouded by what 'we should be doing;' it's about 'what we have to do.' simply feel and react. you can't get much more raw than that.
as for the third party who most feel should shoulder the blame--i think that's wrong. this is partly because that's how a large part of my heart feels, so i let it win out my head that knows some of the blame should be pointed here. also, i do extend a certain level there of blame, just not one with as severe consequences. but the biggest reason that this third party is 'off the hook' in my view was that the fight was about reactions to this stimulus. we still made the decisions that ended the friendship--blaming the stimulus would be picking low fruit. although it's easy to do, and tempting, i think accountability plays a bigger role. and as simple as that is, it isn't.
atleast not in and of itself.
-k.
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