Losing my best friend to love

Shae Fitzpatrick

This story is 100% true, please read to the end to understand.

I remember it like it was yesterday. I met the only person i would ever consider a true friend. We are both in the cadets at the same squadron and at the beginning of the training year, we had an FTX. FTX is like a squadron wide survival activity. The squadron made a mistake and placed me in the wrong flight. A flight is a group of cadets, usually about 20 or so. Anyways, we divided into our flights to go build our camp for the night. As a senior cadet I was too busy managing all the younger cadets to notice her at first. But as things started to calm down, and bedtime was approaching, I noticed her. The most beautiful girl in the entire squadron. Me being my normal awkward self was all awkward talking to her, meanwhile I was thinking “this chick is actually kinda hot.” Later to find out that she had a boyfriend. I was crushed. Cut me some slack, I was 16. Anyways, i ended up staying awake all night talking to her and fell more and more in love with her with every word she spoke. There is a rule at FTX that you need to have a buddy buddy to go to the bathroom and stuff with, in case you trip on a root and fall unconscious or something. When I needed to go, she immediately volunteered to be my buddy buddy. Eventually the FTX ended and it was time to go home. I didnt think of her as a friend at this point, just another person I had a good conversation with. Little did I know it would evolve into the best friendship I ever had.

Anyways, after we arrived home, I found all sorts of excuses to talk to her. All relating to cadets, id ask random questions that I already knew the answer to, and eventually questions became conversations and conversations became jokes. And all this eventually became a friendship. Fast forward a month or so and she told me that she wanted to go to a basketball tournament with the squadron but she wasn't on the team. She wanted to watch and see her summer camp friends who were gonna be there and she hasn't seen in forever. She asked me if I wanted to go with her. I has a mandatory class for flight training that day. I skipped it to take her. She was delighted that id make a sacrifice for her like that, especially since she knew how set my heart was on getting my pilots license. Anyways, the trip started very awkwardly. I sat with a seat in between us on the bus and eventually I started to sit closer… Always wondering if I was doing the right thing. Eventually at this basketball tournament, I acted all protective of her when this dude from another squadron was throwing a tennis ball at her. We started calling him russian guy (remember him, he's important).

Fast forward another month and my squadron had a dance to celebrate Christmas and on the last song of the night, I asked her to dance, without even realizing it somehow (long story, dont ask). Anyways she was reluctant at first, gave me this look but eventually agreed. She was in a beautiful red dress with a heart necklace. Her hair was up in a bun and she was the most beautiful girl i've ever seen. We slow danced to all of me by john legend, my hands on her waist and hers on my shoulders. After that, she swiftly went to the bathroom and ignored my existence completely while I helped clean up and pick up garbage from the mini potluck that happened before the dance. Eventually her ex boyfriend who is also in the same squadron as us, who she broke up with the day after she returned from FTX; the day after she met me, approached me and asked if I was going to walk her home. I asked if I should and he told me no. So I reluctantly took his advice and continued getting ready to leave. As I was waiting for my mom to show up to pick me up, I saw that she was walking home with her ex walking right next to her. So it started to raise my suspicion level a bit but I realized that maybe they were walking at the same pace. Until he reached over and started carrying her bag. Again, I was crushed but more confused than anything. She had spent time talking shit about him to me and that same night he had danced with another girl. I texted her later and acted as if everything was alright but it wasn't. I had developed some strong feeling for this girl at this point, she wasn't just a stupid high school crush anymore, she was more than that, I’d go as far to say the one for me, my one true love, to the point that I didn't even look at other girls anymore, she was the only girl in the world for me and so seeing her with another man; her ex of all people just crushed me. But I let it go. Eventually I asked her if I had done the right thing by dancing with her and she said that she loved it. It was my first slow dance and I had no idea what I was doing but apparently I did it right. More time passed and we chilled a lot over the christmas break. I learned a lot about her over this time and when cadets started again I only started to go to the mandatory training nights to be with her. I wanted to be the best at everything and have the best uniform to impress her because she was the best at everything in cadets. It started a little fun rivalry between us. Meanwhile everyone was joking that her and i were dating and asking questions. All because of the slow dance, which was starting to annoy her a bit.

In january, I started to develop some really bad depression for no reason at all and told her about it. I was inches from ending my own life so many times and every time I would tell her and she would do or say something to prevent me from following through. Shes the reason im alive today. I eventually started to help her through every issue she had in her own life no matter how tired I was. I always made time for her. I always acted gentlemanly towards her, I always spoke politely to her and complimented her often. I felt like I owed my life to her because she saved it so many times. When march rolled around, I was spending so much time with her, we became gym buddies and went often. But I also got jealous any time she went out with another friend (boy or girl) and it was eating away at me. One time we went out for burgers and talked for 4 hours straight at the restaurant right until closing time when they kicked us out. I had the best time of my life… we spoke about romantic things, silly things, personal things, it was truly a magical night. She told me everything from her physical insecurities to her past. This was the week before she left for italy... The week she was away was the hardest time for me because i’d text her and she'd go online and go offline a minute later, without even opening the message and I had very little contact with her throughout the week. so to keep myself entertained, i did other things to keep myself from gling insane. One thing i did was post on my snapchat story a little game where people would snap back a person i would make a perfect couple with and if the name came up 3 times id talk to her. Of course many people said her. Everyone wanted the 2 of us to date, as if we were made for eachother.

There was a region wide dance for all cadets coming up the week after she got back from italy. A couple of weeks before she left, I had asked her to be my date to which she agreed. This is where my world collapsed… remember russian guy? Well she told me after agreeing to be my date that she promised him a dance. I was jealous and felt like it was wrong that she would dance with another guy while being my date. I was sacrificing a trip to ottawa that included everything I was interested in like aviation and military stuff to go to this dance with her, the least she could do was dedicate herself to me alone. So I continued to think about this and got more depressed about it. Eventually a mutual friend of ours told me something she told them that made my heart break. Apparently she said she wasn't that into the dance at all. And that she didnt care about what happens as long as shes going with someone, no matter who it is. This was the last straw. I couldn't take it anymore. I confessed my feelings to her and asked if there was any way anything would happen between the 2 of us. When she said no I proceeded to confront her about all the things i've heard and everything I've kept bottled up for so long. Her response was to turn the tables and play the victim card and throw away our friendship. I apologized profusely for everything. I didn't even know what exactly I was apologizing for because deep down I knew I did nothing wrong. I loved her so much. Too much. I wanted her and me to happen and so did everyone else. I couldn't keep it in, and it cost me the best friend I ever had. Eventually I stopped apologizing and trying to make everything better. I realized that she did the same thing to a few other people in the past for different reasons and realized that if she wanted our friendship to continue then it would have already. I told her everything, from how it was all her fault to how its not a crime to have feeling to how I knew about what she did to those other people to how I have no more feelings for her anymore to how she's the reason I started cutting myself. I'm still struggling with depression to this day and many times i've felt on the verge of suicide. Its hard to deal with without her by my side. Even after she promised she’d never abandon me. All these inside jokes and great times and sacrifices on both ends for nothing. I sacrificed money, time, energy, etc. For her and she sacrificed her emotional state, and time for me too. I really thought we’d last forever.

I made a couple of friends since I lost her but none are as good as she was. We aren't on speaking terms anymore and it's tough seeing her every week at cadets. I cry every night over missing her and feel worse and worse every day. She left me at my worst point for the dumbest reason... because I loved her. Now my life consists of trying to figure out how to get revenge and coexisting with her awkwardly. She's hosting a party at her house soon for the drill team at our squadron to which I was invited as I am on the drill team but it's going to be very awkward. I don't want to go, mainly because its her house and she probably told her parents everything and twisted it to make me look bad. And in a couple of weeks we have our next FTX. I wonder how that's going to play out… I guess we will see. The moral of the story is this: Never fall in love with your best friend if you can help it because it will lead to lots of heartache and late nights crying in bed about him/her, it will change you, the emotions that once existed will be wiped, the world will become grey. Nothing will matter anymore.