turning 20

My friends planned a surprise party. And by friends I mean this one guy I don’t talk to anymore. And by planned, I mean he invited everyone that he wanted to be at my party and very few people that I wanted there. One in particular. Because they had figured out what we had done.

Maybe it was the time we showed up late to a show at one of the clubs we were always at and he was wearing my Videodrone shirt. Maybe it was because we started doing things by ourselves because we got along better than the others, because we understood. Maybe it was because the night of P’s epic birthday bash at my house, this friend slept in my room. Maybe it was…

We all know what it was. We all know why the one person I wanted at my birthday wasn’t allowed to be there. I won’t even write it down, because it’s ridiculous. It was petty. It was stupid. We let P run our lives. And really I will never know why we did at that time because these people he kept insinuating he would cut us off from were just as much, if not more our friends as his. And very few of them chose sides. And very few of them cared when a few months later, P cut me off too.

I remember the exact moment we stopped pretending to be friends, but it had been a long time coming. From P judging the  handful of boys I would date that summer, to dictating when we would all quit working at that club, to trying to tell me that my friend K actually didn’t like me at all, which ended up being the furthest thing from the truth, it was in the mail.

The weekend we stopped being friends I had to work a lot promoting the BMX thing at the fair that I met BMX Boyfriend at. One of the nights I had P’s girlfriend in my car and while I was getting gas, she saw my journal in the car and read part of it where I was complaining about P’s attitude. I was surprised she read it, but unsurprised that she probably told him what I said. Because the next night I picked them all up from work after watching the BMX boys hotbox the half pipe’s dressing room and we ended up in a fight about several things. I snapped. I probably said some things I shouldn’t have but I had just heard one disapproving thing too many from the 50 year old 20 year old at that point. I took them home. I called soon to be BMX boyfriend and we went to Carrows and ate.

Breaking up with friends is just like breaking up with a boyfriend or girlfriend. There’s the returning of stuff. The chosing of sides, of places that you get and they get. I got what I wanted. I got quiet. I got most of my friends back that had been alienated. I got new friends. I eventually got R back too, even though it took awhile and at first, it wasn’t exactly the same and then it was better.

I really tried to rekindle my friendship with P later in life. I did a couple of things for him and his girlfriend, who I adored. And maybe it was my boyfriends at the time that made it not work out or maybe I was just past this point in my life, but it was never really possible. And that’s okay too.

But the night I turned 20, P was there. R wasn’t. And I stood out on the balcony of my friend’s apartment swigging off of the official summer beverage of Corona, waiting to go home.