Letting go...

I've been listening to Keith Urban and You'll Think of Me all morning...

Letting go of Brandi as a friend has been almost as painful as letting go of her as a girlfriend...ideally, I'd love to say that losing her friendship was harder than letting go of the relationship, but the reality is that the break-up was just more painful...which is exactly what makes the whole situation so complicated, I'm fully aware...

But I'm just tired of the games...I'm tired of the pretending like things are better than they are...I'm tired of acting like Brandi is being more of a friend than she really is...

I have zero expectations for Brandi, anymore...I'm sure her life is just fine...and letting go of someone who has been your very best friend is no mean feat...but I just can't pretend, anymore, that she's really being a better friend than she is...at best, she's a casual acquaintance, at this point, that I just happen to have a lot of history with...

I've never let go of a friend like this before...I've never had reason to...I've never been as close as Brandi and I were, worked as hard at the relationship, and then abruptly had no contact...in the past, either I've had mutual falling outs, sometimes having others afraid that we had fallen out more than we actually had, and retouched base years later or I've worked hard and just decided to put the friendship aside until I could trust that the friends involved were in good faith with me...

When I lost my first best friend, Mike Coupland, to his insecurities about being popular and being as successful as me in speech, a fight where I got my ass kicked, and a two-year hiatus before we were debate partners my senior year of high school (Mike and I would lose touch at the end of debate season when he backed out of Regionals at the last minute until he called me from Alaska where he was stationed with the Air Force and when he returned to Wichita with a wife and a daughter when I was still at Wichita State University)...

When I lost my first closest friend...it was hard...

Mike and I spent all of our time together in junior high and high school...multiple sleep-overs, even on weeknights, our parents were so enamoured with our friendship...we got caught together my freshman year in Haysville joyriding in my dad's car...Mike got grounded...I got no punishment and one of best conversations I had with my dad during my teens...

Mike and I would stay up late making crass jokes about hairlips and wood-eyes, what everyone we knew must say when they woke up in the morning, eating potato chips and drinking milk, and just talk about everything under the sun that could possibly spark the curiosity of two 14-year-old boys...

Mike was the first person I ever developed that close a bond with...
And when we lost that, it hurt but I never felt anything like this...
I don't want to feel this...I don't want to feel like my happiness is so dependent on the choices of another person...

I've lived through enough pain and tears for one person to last a lifetime...

You would think it would serve as a deterrent to risking it again...
But that hasn't at all been the case...the irony is that this is the time in my life when I've had the most attention from the opposite sex...the time when I've been most open to love...but it's also been the time when I just haven't been able to find love...no matter how hard I've tried...

And I'm just holding out for something true...

I don't ask girls to date...because my figuring is that if I can't find a friend who I care about as much and more than Brandi and make a relationship with that person, then it really won't ever be love...it will always live in the shadow of what I had with Brandi, as every relationship I've had since that time has lived in my heart...
But that hasn't been because I dated Brandi...I've dated plenty of people and not felt the feelings of loss I've felt the last 5 years...
It's because Brandi's and my friendship was the closest connection I've ever felt with another person...

So letting go of that is hardly an easy thing...

But I just can't live like this anymore...

And I just have to come to terms with the fact that Brandi's choices, for better or for worse, are not only her own...but that she's just not interested in my friendship, anymore...she thought at one point that she could be friends no matter what happened, no matter who we ended up dating or marrying...and she just discovered that it wasn't a promise she felt like she could keep...

And that the only end to this road of constant pain and heartache is just letting go completely...

And hoping I never see her again...because the superficiality in that encounter, absent some kind of substantial resolution of the heartache between us, would just be one more painful reminder of just how little I matter in her life, anymore...

And no matter how painful that is to face...I just don't need that in my life, anymore...

Melissa just had a reporter from the University Daily Kansan call about the 10-minute play festival that we're doing with EMU here at the Lawrence Arts Center (my performances have sucked in a serious way, by the way:)...and she was so sweet...she was just like, "If she wants to call me back, that would be fine. And if she doesn't want to call me back, that would fine too."

And that's how I feel about Brandi...I'm tired of the superficial contact...and I'm heartbroken by no contact, at all...but I just don't need the heartache in my life, anymore...

It's just so true...if you love something, you've got to learn to let it go...
If you love someone and you can't let them go, they'll never be their own...

And I don't want to own anyone...ever...

Love,
Ben