Chiquita on Life, Sometimes

Yesterday I had a really interesting and pretty sad experience. I’ve had this friend for a long time. We grew up together, fought as children, lost touch for a while, as we got older. Last year, I got a job at a pizza place in town, and my friend just happened to work there. He’s one of those people that think they are so cool. He’s really cocky, and I know him well enough to know he’s no hot shot, and I have to laugh at him when he puts on this front that he does. I wasn’t aware he worked there. On my first day, he walked in wearing one of the pizza place’s shirts, and I joked with the manager that I quit, as my long lost pal sauntered up to the counter with the same grin on his face that’s been stuck there since we were tots. We joked and teased each other like back in the day. Months passed and eventually our friendship and teasing turned into flirting, and finally blossomed into a relationship. For a long time, all we did was have fun. We hung out with childhood friends and people I hadn’t seen in years. It was just a really good time. Eventually though we just became too much for each other. I think it has something to do with the fact that we are so alike. We’re both stubborn as the day is long, and we are both always right. We began to argue and fight all the time. I just can’t handle yelling and fighting, so I just completely removed myself from the relationship. I blew him off, constantly ignored his phone calls, texted him back with short, one-word answers. Eventually he gave up on me, or so I thought. Last night he texted me, wanting to talk about it. I’m the kind of person who sometimes you hurt me, and I just need to go away and be hurt, alone, for a while. Unfortunately, he wasn’t having any of that. I suggested that maybe we just needed to take a break from each other. He couldn’t do it, for reasons of his own unknown to me. I guess I understand that. So, since we couldn’t see eye to eye, we decided that its over, and then he said goodbye. I asked him, “Is that it? You’ll never speak to me again?” He said he was sorry, but no, he wouldn’t, and that was it. Poof. Gone. I guess I’m just really shaken up by this. This person that I’ve known for all of my life no longer wants to be a part of it. I’m just feeling really abandoned. I mean sure, this was the guy I was dating, but besides my best girl friend, he was probably the closest person to me. He knows everything about me. He calmed me down when I cried my heart out the night my cat died. This person knows everything about me, he has all this personal information that no one really cares about, and he just got up and walked out of my life with it. Am I too young to understand this? Is that was this is? I just don’t see why the world has to be like this. Am I really going to see him at the grocery store some day, and we’re just going to act like the thousands of hours we spent together just never happened? Am I supposed to walk by him with my beans and loaf of bread and pretend like he’s not standing right there? I know I’m young, and I’ll probably move away and have my own life in some other town. But right now, this city is pretty much my world. The people I know and love are all I’ve got. How am I supposed to know who is going to get up and leave me standing in their past, and who will always be there? I think I’ve learned a very important lesson here. Cherish the people you love, and love the life you have just as it is right now, because tomorrow it could be totally different, maybe in a good way maybe not. I guess that’s it.