It's gonna hurt when it heals, too.

I admit it. It still hurts. All of it.

I'm healing slowly, and I am doing better than when this all started, but I have a long way to go before I can be satisfactorily back to normal. And ultimately, whatever that normal is, it won't be what was normal before. I am forever changed, for better or for worse.

Part of me is scared of how I'm dealing with it. Integrity has been such an integral part of my life for all of it - I'm a terrible, terrible liar. Even when it comes to little things. Even at the age of seven, I couldn't handle the fact that I spent my lunch money on candy behind my mom's back. Years later (I'm not sure how many, but enough that the point was mute) I told her, almost in tears, that I had kept it from her. That's how honest I am. I hide very little - most of the secrets I keep are secrets my friends have trusted me with, and only a scant few are my own. And most of them, at least one or two people know. There's probably only one or two that I have never told anyone.

So to tell a complete and total lie to myself is terrifying, and giving me all sorts of moral qualms. But, at the same time, I feel like I can justify it by saying it's just another story, just another role to play... I'm a writer, so that's completely normal. I'm very used to pretending to be other people, that's how I've gotten through some of the hardest parts of my life.

But lately, I have been hurting so deeply about some things that I want so desperately to be someone else with a different set of problems that I've completely risen to another level in the reality distortion. I mentally split my lost friend into two people. One that I knew in high school, and died on February 4th. Another that I was acquainted with when I lived in Bellingham, and for whatever reason, just lost touch with.

For how hard I tried in high school to make sure she didn't die, I wish in the end she had. Death is impersonal, not something you do to spite someone. What she did was extremely personal. The way Laura explained it, what she said was, "I'm not going to be talking to Lauren anymore." No denying that that is personal. It's not something I know how to handle.

Not that I know how to handle death either. I'm awful at that. But there's always that consolation that they are in a better place, and it's final. Very final. Sometimes I'm still tempted to go after her. Today I thought for a moment that something Melissa said meant she had talked to her recently, and it horrified me. I have to keep reminding myself that Thuy Huynh is DEAD and any evidence to the contrary would be utterly disastrous. I can't handle thinking that anyone else can talk to her, because she is gone, not just from my life, but from everyone's. Luckily that's not what she meant, but it got me thinking. Lying to myself will only go so far. Sooner or later, I have to face the ugly truth.

She doesn't want to be my friend anymore. She's very much alive, happily married, and raising a child. A child whose face I saw before anyone else saw his face. Never mind the four and a half years we were friends, all the hell we went through and still came out alive. Never mind everything I did for her all those years. Never mind how hard I tried to keep her from killing herself. Never mind the fact that I was in the room when her baby was born, watched her push through childbirth with an incredible strength I didn't know she had. All those memories are only bittersweet for me now. Because, for some reason, in spite of all logic, she doesn't want to be my friend anymore. She didn't even say goodbye. Didn't even hint at it. Just left me in the dark for months, and if I'd never texted Laura, "hey, have you heard from Thuy lately?" I STILL wouldn't know what the hell had happened.

That's the truth. She's not dead, even though that would be easier to handle. I have lots of practice being angry, but not a whole lot of practise being hurt or angry. Sure, I've been rejected before, but that's a hell of a lot different than getting discarded after four years of intense friendship... especially for no known reason. I hate feeling angry, but I can't help it. What she did hurt me like nothing else in my life ever has. I'm angry, I'm extremely hurt, and I'm terrified to get close to new people and to stay close to the ones I already love.

I am in constant fear of not being good enough, and to make matters worse, I'm so desperate for attention that I never want to be alone... but at the same time I feel guilty, knowing I shouldn't be so self-centered.

I got called on that, too.

"I wonder what percentage of sentences that come out of your mouth throughout the course of the day start with 'I' or 'my'."

YIKES. That hurt. Mostly because she was right. Yeah, I am pretty full of myself. I want to tell people everything about myself, and I want them to listen and be interested. Mostly I just want to be loved and good enough, and I think talking is how I'm going to get it. Probably not. But that's how I've been for years... I talk a lot. And if I don't, I feel like I'm acting fake, because I'm not really a quiet person. But lately I feel like I should be, because maybe people would like me better if I wasn't so self-obsessed. So I shut up, even when I feel like saying something, because I think, "They don't care. Stop talking about yourself. No one is interested. Stop being 'stuck in high school'."

Because that's one of the few hints Laura passed on. Thuy apparently thought I was too negative, too stuck in high school. Geeeeeeeeze. You'd think a good shake on the shoulders and a "for fuck's sake, quit whining and enjoy college" would have done it, but apparently the situation was so outta control it made it worth throwing my friendship away completely. I mean, sure, I hated Bellingham, and I had my down-in-the-dumps days, but good lord...

And as if that weren't enough, my best local friend had this to say a couple weeks ago:

"Sorry I've been 'stalking' you so much, it's just with Jake in Australia, you're the next best thing."

Let's review. We've known each other since 2001. Her sixth grade year, my seventh. We were in choir together, we went to the same school, shared countless sleepovers, dreams, obsessions, everything. Since graduating, we've stayed really close in spite of me being in Bellingham for two years and our lives going in completely opposite directions. (I'm a science major, hoping to have a career in that field and then settle down and have a couple kids; she's taking a break from school to start her music career and then travel the world.) Still, we have stayed closer to each other than to any of our other high school friends. Jake? They dated for a year and a half, which granted is really big deal, but they've probably known each other since like 2005 at the earliest. And he's a guy. Yeah, you get close to boyfriends, but there are some things guy friends just can't do, some roles only your girlfriends can fill. Oh, and did I mention they broke up OVER A YEAR AGO?? I know they're still friends, but to think that he is a better friend than me, especially when I've known her at least twice as long, that hurt. A lot. She's apologized a million times, and I believe her, but that's something you can't take back once you say it, and it still hurts.

I keep hearing that I need to be a grown up, accept that I have new responsibilities... I think I'm doing okay with the responsibility part (I pay the bills on time, clean up after myself, and I'm getting better at cooking) but in reality, I'm totally emotionally immature. I can think of tons of excuses - Thuy gave me way too much responsibility in high school, putting her life in my hands and making me grow up too fast; another friend is overseas with the military, in a life-and-death situation I still feel too young to handle; I was homeschooled until just before high school and didn't get socialized like everyone else; etc. etc. etc. - but in the end, it doesn't really matter WHY. The point is I have the emotional maturity of someone who's about 15, and I have no desire to grow up and be the 21 (almost 22...!) year old I actually am. I'm not ready. I feel like I was robbed of my sweet sixteen somehow and I want it back. I'm willing to do just about anything to have a chance to be young. I know the only thing I can do is make the most of my 20s before they, too, are gone and I have to REALLY be a grown-up.

But it's hard when I have the lingering fear that I'll never be good enough for my friends, that they might backstab me and run away at any minute, or that they secretly think of my as selfish or second-rate, as a couple of them let slip out loud. It makes me wonder, if that's what they have the nerve to say, what are they not saying? How do they really think of me? Should I even bother opening my mouth at all? Why are they my friend in the first place?

I know I'm probably just being paranoid... but that's just it, isn't it? I'm paranoid. And that is a serious drain on trying to enjoy my life.

Thuy hurt me extremely deeply, and my emotional skin is so raw and tender that any tiny remark by anyone else sends me reeling and over-analyzing, thinking I should run away before anyone else deserts me first. I know that won't fix any of my problems, but there are times when I think like that.

Meanwhile, here I am... self-centered and self-conscious, trying desperately to prove that I'm good enough without driving anyone away... and still grieving the loss of my friend. The one that's still out there, the one that I won't ever try to talk to again, no matter how I'm tempted. It won't work; I gave up trying months ago. I haven't called her since I left that one last furious voicemail the night Laura told me what happened. There's no point. Even if we did get back in touch, what would I say? "Gee, thanks for finally picking up the phone. Am I bloody optimistic enough for you now, and do you have anything you'd like to say to me after all those months of shutting me out?" I think not. What's done is done and trying to change it will just tear me apart, so now matter how many times I have the same repeated dream, the dream is a lie.

The dream is always the same, although it's always somewhere different. Sometimes there's a phone call, sometimes I run into her on campus, or she comes to my house, or I find her at hers, or maybe the setting is something I dreamed up completely. But the message is always the same. Every time, she tells me there's been some terrible misunderstanding (and it's never clear what this misunderstanding is) and it was all just a stupid mistake and everything is going to go back to the way it was. And then usually we hug and make up and there's this feeling of overwhelming relief that the grief is gone and everything is okay, and she never meant to hurt me.

THIS WILL NEVER HAPPEN. Even if she did come to me and explain this misunderstanding, whatever it could possibly be, there's no way things would ever go back to normal. No misunderstanding could justify the months of silence. I am hurt way too deeply to ever risk letting her in again. At least not like I did before. Who knows, maybe ten years from now she'll get in touch and apologize, and maybe we'll be soccer mom acquaintances after that, but probably not. And if that does happen, we will never be as close as we were. She cut me way too deep.

It's funny, I've gotten awfully used to hurting. Not that I like it, but there you have it. The first time Nikki and I went to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, I was a wreck at the end of it... the themes of betrayal and loss were so overwhelming that I was digging my nails into my arm, desperate for comfort, and I literally wanted to scream at the top of my lungs and smash things to pieces... not unlike Bellatrix smashing all the dishes in the Great Hall at the end of the film. It took me quite a while to calm down, but after listening to a bunch of music and realizing that as angry as I was, I missed her, I felt better, strangely. I was able to deal with it better thinking that it was okay to miss the girl I once knew. Because whether you think of her as dead or not, the person I was friends with in high school is obviously gone. There's nothing wrong with missing that person... just as it's okay for me to be angry at the person she's become. It doesn't have to be so black and white.

The next time we saw the movie, I was prepared for what I would see and feel. And when the death scene came, I was ready. I was braced for it, and almost unattached. I watched it almost numbly, thinking that as much as death and betrayal suck, they are part of life, and there was nothing I could do about it but handle it maturely. It made me think of the fact that Jason had just flown to Iraq. There's nothing I can do about that, either. Nothing but pray for his safety and wait. No amount of tears from me is going to break his contract with the Air Force.

While it's encouraging to see a hint of maturity in myself, part of me wishes I didn't have the need to develop it in the first place. I still feel a little bitter for how fast I've had to grow up, and for how much I have gone though that has made me hurt. It seems like I'm always telling myself to just keep going, and it'll be better someday. Someday. Someday Thuy won't be suicidal anymore, someday I won't care that Tara rejected me the way she did, someday I won't be stuck in Bellingham anymore, someday my cardiovascular system will work right, someday my family will stop bickering, someday I'll see my dad more often, someday Sierra will come back home, someday I will have enough money, someday I won't have acne anymore, someday it won't fucking hurt so much that Thuy discarded me, someday Jason will finish his contract and come home safe, someday I'll be good enough for everyone I love..........

I'm pretty sick of telling myself if I can just get through _______, then it'll be okay. When will it be okay? It seems like every time I come close to feeling better, something else brings me down. Is it just that I'm weak? Things hurt me more easily than they hurt other people? Or do I just have god-awful luck?? Sometimes I think I must have been really horrible person in a past life, because I don't know what the hell I did to deserve all this. Or maybe I'm doing just what Thuy accused me of. Getting hung up on all the downsides. Maybe my life isn't so bad, and my misery is entirely my fault because I don't focus on the good sides enough. Who knows. Probably a mix of both.

So for now I keep lying to myself. Pretending to be someone else to get through the bad days, and reminding myself that, at least figuratively speaking, Thuy is dead. Gone, at least, and nothing will bring her back to me.