Thoughts On The Friendzone

thoughts on the friendzone

when i was 5 years old my best friend was a boy named kyle who didn’t know how to knock on doors so he made dinosaur noises outside my window to wake me up in the summer until i demonstrated how to ball his fists and slam them against my doors.  we collected caterpillars in my trailer park and built them houses while we traded pokemon cards.  he wasn’t the only one.  there was ben, and mitch, and noah—but kyle’s the only one who hurt me, because when he tried to kiss me and i asked him why, he told me “because you’re a girl and i’m a boy, shouldn’t we like each other?”

i missed him so much and i wondered why he couldn’t just be my friend like he always was

in the first grade there was rich and joseph and i got sent to detention with them almost every day with a smile on my face.  we built block towers and sang to my teacher’s lion king soundtracks when she’d turn the lights off during lunch time.  one day they got in a fist fight over me at recess, and i wondered why they felt they needed to share my friendship, like it was something they owned.

in the second grade zach and i played yu gi oh under our desks during free time and i got moved for talking to him constantly.  everyone in the class would tease him and i for talking, asking when we were going to date already, asking him if he’d kissed me, and he stopped being my friend.

when i was 11 i met a chubby boy with the name of a colour who wore puffy vests and unwashed t-shirts, with greasy hair and bright blue eyes and a smile that hid hurt behind it.  people didn’t like him because he was silly, but i liked him, because i was also silly.  he became my friend the day he bought me 5 giant roses and asked me to be his girlfriend, and i politely declined but promised him i’d be his best friend because i’d always wanted a best guy friend that stuck around. we burnt our feet on the concrete during the summer and walked home with the sunset silhouetting us.  he talked often about how he loved me, but never blamed me for being me, even though he refused to move on. that boy dyed his hair jet black and sat on the end of my bed playing songs to me on guitar, and all that pent up rage from before didn’t show until the first time he slapped me across the face and called me a dumb cunt.

in the 7th grade there was a boy named ryan who sat next to me on the bus and talked to me about manga.  he’d ask me personal invasive questions but i didn’t mind because it was attention and i liked attention.  i was dating another guitarist with curly brown hair, one who was much more kind-tempered than the other, and ryan mentioned how much of an asshole he was every day.  i wondered, why, why does he think the love of my life is an asshole?  but whenever i asked him, he just told me, “girls only date assholes.  there’s no room for nice guys like me.”

i wondered, if he was so nice, why did he say such mean things?

he never stopped with me, taking me to movies, hanging out with me, you know.  being friendly.  i thought we were friends.  but then, how many times had i thought that before?

how many times had i bonded with a boy, thought they got me, only for them to ask me if i wanted to make out?

how come when i told ryan i was coming out as a lesbian, he stopped being my friend, and said “damnit, the one girl i really want to pound into a mattress, and she’s only interested in chicks!”

there was a boy my junior year who stayed up all night with me until the sun rose, talking about life, past loves, hopes, dreams.  beneath a million twinkling stars spanning forever, he brushed long brown hair out of his eyes and listened to me talk about the history that made me. then he asked me if i’d ever consider dating a guy, and complained about how he’d never get laid.

when i told him no a couple hundred times, he found new girls to listen to.

i would sit on the couch and play zelda with dakota, and he’d talk about all my favourite games with me.  he was the closest thing to support i had, and the letters and poems he wrote me were always so kind and friendly.  but he’d put his arms around me on the couch, and no matter how many times i told him i was uncomfortable, he’d still come over every day and do it.

“don’t you know how it feels to love someone and not have them love you back?  don’t you know what it feels like to be friendzoned?”

when i meet guys who talk about the friendzone, who talk about the girls who don’t give “nice guys” like them i chance, i always want to just say

when i was 10 years old i met a girl whose brown hair fell across her shoulders and whos eyes sparkled when the sunlight hit them, whose voice was like velvet and whose scent was like mountain smoke, who made me dizzier than a fly climbing a sugar hill.  and i’m 18 years old, and i still love her, and she knows, and she doesn’t love me.

but my first thoughts upon hearing her rejection were not “what a bitch,” were not “she just wants a douchebag and not a nice girl like me!” were not “im going to keep pushing her until she dates me,”

they were

“she is the best friend i have ever had, and i am the best she’s ever had, and i would hate to take that away from her.”

so before you play the victim, mr. Nice Guy, before you angrily throw your fedora on the ground and blame the girl you claim to adore so much:

put yourself in the shoes of a girl who thought she made a wonderful friend, only to find out that he just wanted her for sex.  that he just wanted her for a relationship.  a girl who was just an object to win, a prize.  a girl who’s trust you’ve just shattered.

maybe she friendzoned you.  but you girlfriendzoned her, first.

Mabel: whoa

Dipper: what?

Mabel: what color is a mirror?

Dipper:

Dipper: don’t do this to me today

What happens once you kill yourself? Because I'm ready to go.

You wanna know what happens once you kill yourself? Your mother comes home from work and finds her baby dead and she screams and runs over to you and tries to get you to wake up but you won’t and she keeps screaming and shaking you and her tears are dripping onto your face and your dad hears all the screaming and runs into the room and he can’t even speak because the child that he loved and the child that he watched grow up is gone forever and finally your little sister runs into the room to see what all the fuss is about and she sees you dead. The person she looked up to and loved. The person she bragged about to  her friends, the person she wanted to be just like when she grew up, the person that made her feel safe. But she’s never really going to get to grow up and smile and laugh and love because she’ll always be consumed with this feeling of missing you. And now there’s something missing from your family and they can barely look at each other anymore because everything reminds them of you but you’re gone and hurts more than anything. and you think that your mom never cared because she was always busy and yelling at you to finish your homework and clean your room and forgot to say I love you sometimes but really, she loved you more than anything and she doesn’t leave the house anymore, she can’t even get out of bed and she’s getting thinner and thinner because it’s too hard to eat. Your father had to quit his job and he doesn’t sleep anymore, every time he closes his eyes he sees his baby dead, and the image never goes away no matter how much alcohol he drinks. And at school your best friend sees that your seat is empty and she gets this sick feeling in her stomach and that’s when she hears the announcement. You killed yourself. And suddenly she’s screaming and crying in the middle of class and no one even bothers comforting because they’re all  busy sitting there staring at your empty seat with tears dripping down their cheeks and all she wants is for you to hug her and tell her it’s gonna be okay like you always did, but this time, you’re not there to do it, everything is dark now that you’re gone and her grades are slipping, she barely goes to school anymore and she ended up in hospital after taking too many pills because she wanted to see you again. the girls who used to make fun of the way you dressed feel their throats get tight, they don’t talk to each other anymore, they don’t talk to anyone, they’re all in therapy trying so hard not to blame themselves but nothing works. and your teacher who always gave you a hard time stares blankly at the wall, she quits her job a few days later. And then your boyfriend hears the news and he can’t breathe, he still calls you a lot just to hear your voice and he talks to you on facebook but you never message him back, he can’t fall in love again because every girl he meets reminds him of you, he’s never going to get over you, he loved you and he cries himself to sleep every night, hating himself and slicing his skin because he couldn’t save you and he’s never going to hold you in his arms or hear you laugh again. Now everyone who knew you, whether they were a big part of your life or someone you passed in the hallway a few times a week, they carry this aching feeling around inside them because you’re gone, and they miss you, and they don’t know why you left but it must’ve been their fault and they should’ve stopped you and they should’ve told you they loved you more and that feeling is never going to go away. And so you killed yourself

but you killed everyone else around you too. 

don’t ever talk to me or my 4500000000 niche AUs ever again

Mabel: will you be the ye to my haw?

Pacifica: I am begging you to stop.