50 Percent

“First the bookstore, now Allie. Why do I keep fucking everything up?” I ask my husband, Jason, tears threatening at the edges of my eyes.

He puts his arm around me and says, “It’s really been a rough couple of months.”

“It all just hurts.”

In June 2022, I let go of the independent bookstore we had built together for the last five years, a childhood dream my husband helped make a reality. In July 2022, I lost my oldest friend. I could blame Covid for both, but that may not be the entire truth.

***

My friend Jess has always said, “Friendship endings are worse than romantic breakups.” In my teens and early twenties, I was wrapped up in anguish over Caleb, or Jack, or whoever, so I disagreed. At 40, I think she’s right; they may not be worse, but they are just as much of a gut punch.

It’s been a year and a half since Allie and I fell out, and I can still picture her bouncy blond curls bounding to our door. I worry about how her kids are doing and think about her husband, Wade, whenever I replace a lightbulb. Wade was always giving us lightbulbs he got on lightning deals at Amazon. Their family had been our most constant companions for the last few years, and their absence left an achy yearning for beach walks, art projects, and late nights drinking and chatting by the fire.

Todd, Jason’s best friend, met Allie 10 years ago and still talks about how frustrated he got with her micromanaging his grilling the wings at our BBQ. “That’s not how you do it; turn them counterclockwise and baste them at every rotation,” she said snidely, hand resting on her angled hip. She returned a few minutes later and nudged him out of the way. “You’re ruining them. Let me just do it if you can’t do it right.”

Most of our friends had a story like Todd’s; she was loud, argumentative, and judgmental. People would always ask if she was coming to our parties to devise ways to avoid getting reprimanded for some minor infraction.

She could be mean. Once, we were chatting, and I told her I was hurt by a supervisor calling me stupid in front of coworkers, and she said, “Well, were you being stupid? You know you can be a little ditzy.” In these moments, Wade would often wink at Jason and say, “They are like twins.” We could both be quick, cutting, and insensitive. I think Wade felt a kinship with Jason; the two had to endure similar behavior from us.

He’s not wrong; Allie and I were similar, especially when we were younger, especially in our aggression. I drove around our town blasting Mudvayne and Tool with a little bunny sticker that shot its middle finger to the world on my front windshield. I was more scared than her, so my anger was directed at people I trusted not to abandon me. I could easily find a reason to tell my mom off for asking me a question the wrong way or yell at my little brother for getting in my way. I wanted so much outside validation that I couldn’t show how I felt about being bullied in school, or my dad leaving us, or anything really. Allie didn’t need anyone to like her; if someone crossed her, she bit back hard. She hasn’t changed much from the fiery 15-year-old who spit on one of my high school bullies while waiting at the bus stop.

I have worked incredibly hard in decades of therapy to curb my rageful impulses into something healthier. When Wade compared us, it made my skin want to run away from my bones. My visceral internal response was, “I’m not like her, even if a part of me was.”

After our fallout, I visited my mom and found a letter from Allie in High School. She accused me of canceling plans, picking boys over her, and being a selfish bitch. I wanted to rip the letter to shreds, avoid the horrible teen version of myself. Instead, I sat on the porch swing, stared at the snow-capped Rocky Mountains, and thought about who I was then and who I am now. At that time, I was obsessed with male validation. My female friends fell to the wayside when a boy asked me out. She was right. I had ditched her often.

Now, I’m the first to call or send a card when a friend is having a tough time. When Allie’s father died, I rushed three hours to her house and brought our favorite red potato, bacon, and broccoli pizza to console her. I’m not a self-obsessed teen anymore and haven’t been for a long time, but now I wonder if Allie ever stopped seeing me as that selfish girl she referenced in her letter.

During the pandemic, Allie, Jess and I had weekly Zooms where she would talk for 50 minutes, and if we were lucky, Jess and I would get 5 minutes each to catch everyone up on our lives. It was her idea to have this touchstone every week, and even if she had a hard time with the listening part of being a conversationalist, I enjoyed the calls.

I know it may sound like it, but Allie wasn’t just an asshole; she was also fiercely loyal, a great defender of her friends and family, and generous. When a new hotel opened in our neighborhood, she paid for a cabana at the pool for our two families. We swam, played with her daughters, drank shark bite cocktails, and ate hamburgers, crispy fries, and rich chocolate mousse.

Allie and I loved talking about books like the newest Colleen Hoover. She was our most vocal champion with the bookstore, reposting our Instagram stories and insisting that her friends and family order books only from us. We introduced new music to each other: the LA Salami she had just heard or the Cat Power song I was currently into. Our shared history and interests gave us a shorthand for communicating, which is hard to find in newer friendships. Over the years, I came to appreciate her unfiltered direct analysis of people and the world, even though it could sting when focused on me and my world.

My therapist likes to remind me that each person in a relationship has 50 percent of the responsibility, even regarding fights. I canceled our plans one July day; that’s on me. Her family was supposed to visit our house for a beach weekend, something we did several times a summer. I was morbidly depressed about closing the bookstore. Covid numbers were up again, and I am immunocompromised and was anxious about visitors.

During the week before our scheduled visit, I tried to share my Covid concerns with Allie and make a safety plan. She shot down every attempt. I said we should try to keep most interactions outdoors. She said it doesn’t matter; this variant is spread outside and inside. I said I was worried, and she said she wasn’t worried at all. There was no compromise or acknowledgment that I was scared. All she could see was that I was implying her family was more of a Covid risk than anyone else in our lives. It wasn’t that at all; Allie was just the only person in my life who lacked the empathy to talk through safety protocols.

After a week of waffling, I sent a long and apologetic text saying we couldn’t do it. Allie wrote back, “ok”, and something in me snapped. I had been so vulnerable trying to explain myself, and this one-word answer was infuriating. I texted her that her response hurt my feelings, and she told me my last-minute cancellation was frustrating. I asked her if we could hop on the phone to discuss it. She said no, she’s busy with her work and kids; when is she supposed to talk to me on the phone? This back and forth continued in spurts from July to December, during which she sent birthday and holiday cards as if nothing had happened. Whether she knew it or not, what she was doing was called bread-crumbing, sporadic acts of attention that didn’t result in anything meaningful, a form of manipulation.

Without telling me, Jason reached out, feeling we were all close enough for him to intervene, and asked her to have some compassion. Given her history with men, I wasn’t surprised this was a step too far. His text was seen as a war cry, and she was primed for battle. Her father had been abusive; he hit her, and he called her names like “fat ass” and “butterball”. When men challenged Allie, she tended towards an extreme reaction.

She doubled down, sending multiple long texts saying we had always hated her and her family; they weren’t good enough for us as friends. The most perplexing text mentioned us thinking she ate too much cream cheese and that we were upset she couldn’t prepare a menu. It was a surreal mix of false accusations mixed with pedestrian offenses. The texts became so hard to understand that I stopped being frustrated and started to worry she was having a mental breakdown. It seemed like she had been upset for the last two decades about the many conflicts we never worked through, some I didn’t even know about, or she had lost her grasp on reality.

It had long been the case that our friendship was great as long as I didn’t challenge Allie. If I did, we often stopped talking. She hated my boyfriend Jeff when we were 20. One day, she got irritated with him and threw some old Kraft Mac and cheese in his face while pushing him out of my studio apartment door. I told her she couldn’t treat him that way; she stopped talking to me for 6 months. A mutual friend married, and we reconnected at the wedding. My mother said we were like sisters because neither of us had one. My mother was also wary when I told her we were friends again but didn’t say anything, in a feat of impressive willpower. I realize now we never sorted through any of our fights. We ignored them, and circumstances always just threw us together again and again.

Missing Allie’s friendship used to be on my mind at least three times a day. I would wake up thinking about what I had done wrong, what she had done wrong, and how to fix it. After a year, it only weighed on me a few times a week. While most of my waking time is not spent thinking about this lost friendship, sleep often brings dreams of reuniting, and I wonder if this is my subconscious telling me to reach out.

***

Fissures in relationships give us time to think. Sometimes, the conclusion is obvious, like “This is bad; don’t go back.” Most of the time, it’s complicated. Most connections have benefits and costs, and I can’t help but continue to weigh the scales in this one. The pull of “what if” tantalizes me, and I start texts saying, “I miss you…” but then erase each letter slowly, knowing that another text won’t solve this. I’m not sure I want this friendship back, but losing it is like pulling a loose thread on my favorite forest green sweater; every time I tug at it, the hole gets bigger, the string looser, and soon I know it will be unwearable.

At some point, I could have stopped asking to have a conversation about what went down, and we would still be friends, but I couldn’t. After years of therapy and being a therapist myself, I’ve learned I need to have open and transparent communication. I want people in my life to have the freedom to tell me when I have hurt them, pissed them off, or they want something from me. I expect the same space from them.

While the throbbing loss has dulled, an ache remains. When I think of her, my chest tightens, and I physically miss her. Pain is our body’s way of informing us something needs attending to. I think the discomfort I feel is telling me I need to work to find closure to a relationship that was not meant to be sustained. But I also wonder if the twinges I feel mean I should heal a friendship that’s been a part of my life for over twenty years. I know the answer, but it’s hard to accept when there isn’t a week I don’t think of Allie. I wonder if she thinks of me.