Turns out, I’m not the bigger person.

I’ve said it before but, for a lot of my adult life I’ve been the bigger person. I’ve held my tongue. I’ve refrained from sending the nasty letter to my grandparents that I’ve had flawlessly written in my head for the last 5 years. I’ve kept my mouth shut about affairs, about little white lies that don’t really matter and, although I have no problem speaking my mind when the pit in my stomach becomes too much to bear, I’ve always been completely aware of the lines people just shouldn’t cross.

Last week, I called a friend of mine crazy [I know you’ve been waiting for this]. I suppose at this point using the word friend is pointless, but when I said it, I suppose that’s what she was; although things hadn’t been exactly ‘friendly’ for us in longer than just a while. 

I said it after I had been provoked and yelled at on the phone. I said it after she told me to fuck off. I said it because before, in, and after the moment I said the words, that is precisely and exactly what I meant. She was being absolutely, totally bat-shit-psychotically insane. I stand by my words.

I’ve never been good at thinking of the exact thing I want to say and being able to say it in the moment I want to say it. Not just in arguments, but in life in general. For wanting to be an actress and having actually come close to winning improv competitions when I was in high school, somewhere along the way I lost all ability to be able to come up with snappy things to say when the alternative is me standing there smiling and nodding like a fool.

But I guess when there’s nothing else to say except the thing you’re not supposed to say to the person you’re not supposed to say it to; it really comes down to whether or not they’ll forgive you or whether or not you’ll care if they don’t.

I know the incessant “woe is me” tweeting is an unfortunate byproduct of the things I said and, if they were coming from just her, I think maybe I could probably ignore it, but when other people are being dragged into the mix – some of which I have never met or heard of – I have to wonder at what age do people get tired of making a hobby out of publicly announcing their personal drama to elicit a reaction from others.

I’ve had falling-outs with friends before. Hell, the last 7 years of my life I’ve been “out” with most of the girls I went to high school with for no real reason other than we grew apart and some of them are awful. And on the other side of the spectrum, I’ve had falling outs that turned around for the better after taking some time apart. However things end up, I would like to think that, at one point, I had a friend who would be more mature than she’s been in the week + that we haven’t been speaking but I guess that’s what I get for willingly letting history repeat itself.

And for having too much faith in people’s ability to change.

I am 100% used to people letting me down and not turning out to be the people I thought they were. So I guess this is my way of coping with the loss of a friendship instead of sucking it up, apologizing for something I’m not even sure I did, listening to the self-obsessive conversations, and rolling my eyes in silence.

And at the same time, I guess this is what it’s like to sink to her level.

Sleep tight.