Why Friendship is the Most Important Thing- Julia Kadar

    I have been trying to figure out what to write about all month.  I considered writing about the obvious stuff, singing, acting, performing, music, that kind of stuff.  Those things are all really important to me, but I just couldn't write.  The words just weren't coming.  So, I started thinking: what if there's something more important in my life right now and that's why I can't write.  Really cheesy I know.  But, it worked.  I realized there was something more important to me, especially in this past month.  So, I've decided to write about that.  Now here's your warning: This piece is filled with drama, so if you don't like reading about that kind of stuff, you can just move on, but if you want a peek at what's been going on in my life, read on.  

    I'll start at the beginning.  A few months ago, my theater started doing shows again.  I did both that they were offering, Annie Jr. and Sister Act.  Now, there is usually at least one new person in every show, but in these shows there were quite a few new people.  I'm going to be talking about one of these new people.  I will call them Connor.  Now, Connor was very nice and very talented, he had one of the lead parts in Annie Jr. and I liked talking with him.  He and I were pretty close, he even told me when he had a crush on one of my friends in the cast, we'll call her Alice because she will be coming again in the story.  About two or three months into the show, I invited him and some of my other theater friends over to my house.  It was a little after Christmas, just for context.  We played games and ate pizza and just enjoyed each other's company.  He asked me if I wanted to hang out just the two of us some time, and I said yes.  We were going to hang out on January 2nd.

    And here's where the fun begins.  On January 1st, just after midnight, I get a FaceTime request from Connor.  We had already been texting so he knew I was up.  I answered, and the conversation went a like this:

"Hey."

"Hi."

"Happy New Year."

"Happy New Year." All normal so far, yeah?  Well then things took a turn.

"So, I was wondering if you wanted to make Saturday a date."  Now, I was confused, but still flattered for whatever reason.

"Wait, what?  You want- wait um-  What about Alice?" 

"I like you.  I kinda just convinced myself that I was supposed to like Alice for whatever reason."  Okay, now I'm super confused, but like an idiot I said:

"Yes, I would love that."  I wouldn't love that, but I had figured it's just a date, what could possibly go wrong?  And who knows?  Maybe it will go really well.  Even as I was telling some of my friends what had happened, I wasn't feeling too good about the whole thing.  I was still super happy someone had asked me out on a date, but knowing it was Connor was really weird.  My friends were happy for me, but for some reason, I didn't want to tell my best friend, we'll call her Ella, what had happened.  That should have been my first red flag.  This was the person who knows me better than anyone, who loves me more than anyone, and I didn't want to tell her.  I had convinced myself at the time that I didn't have to tell her because Connor already had (they were pretty close too), but feeling unsure of whether or not you should tell your BEST FRIEND something is not a good sign.  

    Well it's the next day and I was going to my date.  I wasn't too nervous, but I wasn't really excited about it either.  We walk around and talk, and it's going fine.  It just felt like we're friends hanging out, which was good.  We ended up holding hands, which was less fine, but I dealt with it.  We went to his house and watched a movie, and I really didn't want to be there anymore.  Once the movie finally ended, his dad took me home.  It was a long car ride and I was stuck in the backseat with him.  When I finally got home, I went straight to my room.  I didn't really want to talk to anyone in my family, especially since only my brother had known it was a date and not just hanging out.  I already knew I didn't want to go out with him again, so I texted my friend who is a senior and gives great advice, we'll call her Annabeth, and I asked if we could talk the next day.  She said yes, and I went to bed.  In case you weren't sure how anxious I was, I had terrible nightmares all night and kept waking up in the night.

    Annabeth and I talked, she reassured me about everything I was nervous about and helped me figure out how I felt.  She also approved how I planned on ending things with him, making sure I wasn't being too harsh or too brutally honest with him.  I decided I would wait until he asked me out again before I ended things, because I didn't want to text him out of the blue and just end things.  So I waited for the right moment.

    The next couple days, Connor texts me a lot, I try to remain as distant as I can without seeming rude. I decline FaceTimes, I make excuses so I don't have to keep texting, that kind of stuff.  Then, on January 5th, I get a text from him asking if we could FaceTime later, saying that we needed to talk.  Foolishly I let hope swell inside of me.  Maybe he was going to end things so then I didn't have to.  Unfortunately, as fast as my hopes arose, they were pushed back down as he texted, "nothing bad though."

    He calls at about seven that night.  We say hi to each other, ask how the other one is, and I feel pretty uncomfortable and anxious, because I figured the time to end things was coming up.  Then, he says he wants to ask me a few questions.  I agree of course, and I doubt I will ever forget the first question he asked.  The FIRST question he asked was, "Where do you see this relationship going?"  I didn't know whether to be happy this was the first question or terrified.  I started talking, and the words kept spilling out of me.  I gave all my points of why we shouldn't see each other anymore, and when I paused he stayed silent, so the words just kept flowing out of me.  I felt nothing.  I thought I would feel guilty or sad or something, but even as he was getting visibly upset, I felt nothing.  I was completely numb.  Finally, we hang up, and I'm not even relieved it's over, I'm just numb.  I texted Annabeth telling her I ended things, and telling her he didn't seem to take it well.

    The next day I'm in school and I got a text.  From Connor.

"How long did you know."  And then in a second text he said, "that you were going to end things."  I almost laughed out loud at the fact that it was two texts.  I just made it seem so dramatic to me.  What follows is verbatim the text conversation we had:

"Idk maybe a day or two?" I lied.  It had been about three or four days but I didn't want to make things worse for myself because I knew I was about to be interrogated.

"Why would you wait"

"I was waiting for a good moment.  Also I was really dreading it.  I didn't want to hurt you."

"Then you probably shouldn't have said yes in the first place".  What?  I admit, maybe I shouldn't have said yes, but the whole point of a first date is to see if it could work out, so asking me after the fact why I even said yes blew my mind.

"I wanted to give it a try."

"You should've told me when you decided.  You knew for days & I was spending my free time planning your f**king birthday present."  (He didn't censor it) That was when I truly did start laughing out loud.  Of all the things to be mad about and yell at me about, you picked the fact that you were planning a birthday present.  But, I still apologized and all that.  He said he was trying not to be mad, but our friendship wouldn't be what it was.  I said ok.  That really hurt to hear, that our friendship wouldn't be the same because of this.  I don't know what I was expecting, but it was so strange that he felt our friendship would change so drastically after just one date.

    Well, he didn't stop with texting me.  He posted about it on tiktok and on his public and private snapchat stories.  How did I know about the private story posts?  Oh, well that's because he didn't take me off of the story even though he was talking about me.  Again, red flag.

    He continued posting about me on his snapchat, although he never used my name.  I decided not to really let it bother me, because he was upset.

    Things got worse.  He kept posting and even starting talking about how upset he was in a group chat he knew I was in.  I started to get really angry with him.  He was trying to manipulate me, trying to make me feel bad.  For what reason, I wasn't sure, but my friends felt that way as well.  Everytime he would post or say something, Annabeth and Ella would make sure I saw it and we would talk about it.  They made me feel so much better and they validated all of my feelings, which was exactly what I needed.  I needed to know it was okay to be angry, to know that I wasn't just overreacting but that he really was being the worst.

    We finally got to start rehearsals back up, and Connor did the most cliche thing I've ever seen.  I "accidentally" sent me a text meant for someone else about me.  Now this text was absolutely ridiculous, so ridiculous I won't subject you to reading it.  Basically, I had complimented him at rehearsal and he got "so confused."  I flirt with everyone.  My close friends even have designated nicknames like beautiful or gorgeous, so paying him a compliment didn't seem like such a big deal to me, but apparently it was.

    On the 15th of January, he sent me an apology.  Essentially he said he now realized how his actions might affect me and how he realizes it wasn't entirely my fault that I ended things.  I apologized as well, for whatever reason, and basically just said I want to be friends, but things definitely won't be the same.  That was a lie.  I didn't want to be friends anymore, not after everything he had done.  He sent another text saying sorry and giving permission to feel my emotions, which made me angry.  He also apologized for all the things he had said in the group chat, but not on his social media.

    Now this is when things start to get bad.  During rehearsals, I started getting super anxious around him, so whenever I got uncomfortable, I would go across the room and talk with Annabeth.  Well, one day I was over talking with Annabeth and I told her how uncomfortable I was around Connor, and she said she totally got.  Again, validating my feelings and making me feel better.  We started talking about how Connor had invited our friend group over on Friday (I think it was Tuesday at the time of this conversation).  Then Connor came over, getting right up in our business to ask us what we were talking about, so I told him we were talking about Friday.

    Surprise surprise, apparently he was upset with that because the next day at about seven in the morning, Connor posted on his private snapchat story about how people shouldn't talk bad about him while he's in the same room.  This astounded me.  I made one small comment he couldn't possibly know about, and then we were talking about an invitation he gave us, and he was upset.  It frustrated me so much because he was assuming that every conversation I had was about him and that I would automatically be talking bad about him.  To be fair, I haven't been saying nice things about him, especially not to Annabeth and Ella, but he didn't know about that.

    I am full on ignoring him at this point, not even looking at him unless he says something to me first, in which case I only give a short response.  I started to get worried because he and my friend Alice were starting to get really close, and he had liked her before me.  So, I did the stupidest I could have possibly done.  I texted Alice about it.

    Alice didn't know what Connor had done, and if she knew anything about what had been happening, it would have been from Connor's perspective.  But, I felt obligated to warn her about my suspicions because I knew the real him by this point, the manipulative, narcissistic side he had hidden away when we first met.  So I did, and she told me she didn't want anything more than friendship with Connor.  I was relieved, and I knew she could handle herself when it came to him.  Unfortunately, I think I underestimated the level of their friendship, because the next day I see his snapchat and tiktok are filled with posts about a certain someone saying bad things about him behind his back.

    My heart sank.  The only logical explanation for his outrage is if Alice told him what I said, which would be very bad, even though I didn't say anything specifically bad about him to her.  My fears were reinforced when Connor talked to Annabeth and Ella and told them it was about someone in our friend group, and with our genius deduction skills we were able to deduce the mystery person was me.

    Luckily, my friends are amazing, so I asked Ella to try to get information out of Connor.  She was able to figure out it was about me from the information she got out of Connor, but it wasn't enough.  So, when I went over to talk with Annabeth that day, Ella did some eavesdropping on Alice and Connor.  Apparently, they were coming up with a plan to text the unnamed party (me) to confront me about what I had said.  I really wasn't happy about that, because not only did I then have to expect an angry text, but it also means that my friend Alice was on Connor's side.  I had already known I had screwed up texting Alice about it, but this just made me so upset with myself and her.  So, I texted Alice an apology for getting into her business.  She read it, but she never responded.

    That was this past Saturday.  I still haven't gotten a text from Connor, and I'm so ready for Sister Act to end so I never have to see him again.  This was long, and full of absolutely true drama that's been going on in my life the past month.

    Throughout this month, my friends have been there for me.  They were happy for me when good things happened, and they supported me when everything fell apart.  I don't know what I would have done without them, I probably would have fallen apart.  They have talked about everything with me, and they have made me feel so much better about everything that has happened.  It's frustrating that the only way to know who your true friends are is to have something bad happen, but it truly is the most effective method.  I love my friends more than life itself, and I look forward to the day I can repay everything they've done for me just this month.