You and I didn’t initially start out in the same circle of friends. I was listening to NIN and Skinny Puppy and you were immersed in Jazz and Triphop with a sprinkle of Pavement and Jawbox. So our friend circle was not exactly “friendly”. You were also a little younger than me, but that became a regular demographic in my life during that time. I had all but abandoned the few high school friends I had growing up due to different interests, scene changes, and my abrupt and epic failures at attempting a college career. When you and I met, I was in transition. I was meeting a whole new generation of VCU kids who were mostly from Northern Virginia and the Virginia Beach area, younger and quite frankly mostly artistically pretentious. My mommy and daddy didn’t pay for college and surely would never pay my rent, so I was, to say the least, a black sheep amongst albino pigs. How refreshing it was to meet someone who grew up in Richmond, who went to a rival high school and who understood residing in the West End part of town.

Although you were younger, we had a few mutual friends in common and it was a nice familiarity, something I didn’t get from the others. There’s something about being in your 20s that makes you think that the bonds of friendship could never be broken because of heroic deeds like standing watch while you peed in an alley or getting in someone’s face at the bar because you were rudely pushed. At one time I had an idealistic notion that my friends were my family and everyone was a nice and good person, but in my heart, I knew this not to be a real thing. You didn’t like conflict and always saw the good in others, where I was less optimistic and had no expectations about turbulence in my life. I didn’t take shit from people. Sure I was a ball of emotion and sensitivity, but I was also extremely protective over what was my realm. I was Allison to your Andrew (Sheedy/Estevez).

The thing about Richmond is that it’s a never ending cycle of people you know. No matter where you go, if you grew up here and were involved, you’ll know someone. Someone I may not have seen for a year will show up to see a band and we will reconnect or you’ll be at a bar and Johnny who left for college is back for the holidays and the next thing you know your talking about 11th grade English class. It’s a very small and tight knit world, our RVA. As our friendship started to develop so did our combined friendbase. Alas, friends come and go.

You came home. It was my birthday 30th birthday. You were all happy to see me and I was annoyed. It wasn’t you, it was the opened card I had received in the mail that afternoon. She had timed it perfectly so that it would arrive on my birthday. A nice birthday card stating a dissolving of friendship. No reason was given, just that she no longer wanted anything to do with me. Hurt and angry, I handed you the card. Your face was red with rage.

You remember that day, don’t you? J had been friends with us for so very long. She came to all your shows. I took trips with her, we hung out constantly. I didn’t understand it, but I looked at you and said, “One bridesmaid out, seven more to go!” We laughed. You were angrier than I was that day. So much so, you began a mental shitlist. I loved that about you. You had finally started defending me and I knew I made the right choice. Apparently, when I get broken up, I get broken up with. I often wonder what I did that was so wrong. What story does everyone have in their head about what happened to you, to us, to me. It’s all a sham, marriage. People come for the party and the free drinks, while they wager in their heads how long you will last. Some genuinely think it will last forever and some damn you for taking that potential slice of pie away from them. Wife. Husband. It means nothing. It’s just another label. I realized that after the accident.. I was only seen as a possible adulterer, someone who couldn’t take care of you, someone who left you, someone who apparently a lot of people didn’t like. It had appeared that I literally put a spell on you so you would marry me and I could control you. I mean it was a long con with you, almost seven years before you proposed. Here’s a bit of advice to you readers, if for one instant you don’t think that person would choose you when they are passing out life jackets while the ship is going down, walk away, it will hurt a whole lot less.

Making friends in New York was easy and those we connected with were solid friendships. You made new friends after I left. A lot of them. It was as though you created a whole world without me after I left NY. When I sat in the waiting room meeting people for the first time and them looking me with eyes of confusion. I guess they knew something I didn’t. I did find it incredibly strange that certain individuals were bringing by people you didn’t even know. You were lying there with tubes and shit coming out of your body and it was like, “Hi, this is Steve, I brought him to meet you.” Who the fuck is Steve and why is he in my husband’s ICU room? Alas, that’s beside the point right? I was crazy of course to doubt such behaviors. Anyway…

We were the couple who brought people together. I built relationships and used ours to do so in a very social way. Whether it was a party or a dinner soiree or gathering people for a weekend trip, we made it happen. Even in New York, I did my best to bring people to our home in Ridgewood and strangely enough, those Manhattanites came. We loved our friends, they were our extended family and we didn’t hide how we felt about them. You cultivated solid relationships with your musician friends and I brought in new friends from my jobs, intermingling other friends from other lifetimes. It was always easy for me, for us. I think it enhanced our coupledom, we were stronger in the company we kept and friends were always noticing the way we looked at each other, with utter envy. I did a very dumb thing in my life and that was to be too trusting of others. I was lead to believe that these people claiming to be my friend cared about us, liked us for that matter. I was wrong. It takes one tragedy and one divorce to make them scatter like roaches with the lights turned on.

“Oh my God, I can’t imagine…how you must feel. I’m sorry to ask but what happened? I don’t know what I would do if that happened to me! Where is he now? Is she with him?”

The huge embraces I would get. People i hadn’t seen in ages hugging me and looking at me as though they were the ones who suffered through it all. Once stories are told and information is gathered, the flock flee quickly.

After two weeks in the hospital, it was clear that I needed to leave, I felt like your parents didn’t want me there anymore since the dramatic exit of your lovely red headed angel in waiting, it was time for me to get back to work. We had bills to pay and rent was due and I couldn’t lose my job now . It’s what I do. I take the mess and I gather it all and start to organize it. There was no shame in that, I wasn’t leaving you, I was just waiting for you.

Coming back to Richmond was harder. My job was weird. I handled things with an aloofness I didn’t know I had in me. Nobody really cared what was going on in my head. I would sit at my desk and stare at the screen, recounting over and over again what happened and still trying to figure out the mystery which surrounded the incident. People would come by, and I don’t think they knew what to say or how to be around me, they just looked at me with these sympathetic eyes. I would secretly go to the bathroom and cry, wipe my tears, and pretend to be busy. The other admins would ask me dumb questions about you and I gave automated responses, it was just easier. It’s hard to be sad, confused and mad all at the same time. It gave me a slight distraction though and things were changing there with new people to work with. I answered the phone one day and someone from the local paper wanted my recount of the events. (And you said nobody knew who you were. ha!) I was shocked that someone actually wanted to ask the person you were married to about us. My god, the logic of some people. It was the last time anyone referenced me as your wife.

The phone rang. My co-worker was adamantly, I’m talking like in the movies, trying to distract me from leaving my desk. After the second set of rings, I had to answer. It was HR. I knew what was coming. I could almost see the smirk on her face. She resembled the ever classic mean girl stance, like she had done the world a favor, saving her beloved workplace from the unappreciative, emotionally aloof admin. I thought working in advertising would teach me something. It did. It taught me how to become one with my phone and ignore my husband. It gave me expertise in how to fetch my boss’ coffee, her purse, and her lunch and anything else she decided to forget, I’m surprised she remembered to come to work. How anyone could be seen as a marketing genius when she can’t remember to wipe her ass is beyond me. I had to actually lead her from meeting to meeting, it was humiliating. It taught me how much condescension I could take, but if I had just worked a little harder I could step up in the world. I could have just slept with the right exec and found myself in a more suitable position. This prestigious place that so many of my Richmond friends wanted to work at, that I was fortunate to be an assistant in. The place where affairs were born on conference tables and while others sat in awe of themselves at just how darn creative they were. If you weren’t at the cool kids table, you could almost hear the whispers of unapproval as you passed them in the hallway. I often felt like I was that kid in 8th grade again, with the thick glasses and the Wrangler jeans, and my only friends there came from what I knew…soccer and computers. I recalled thinking, I wait to work there. “You can’t pass up the opportunity,” you said when I got news that I scored an interview. I mean everyone wanted to work there!

“We want you to take this time to pursue what you could be really good at. We just don’t think you are ready to come back to work. It’s good for you to take this time to be with your husband.”

I sat there and cried. When I left you, your medical bill was well into the thousands and I couldn’t even fathom how that could be a real thing. “I’ll just get put on your insurance when I come home.,” you said. Of course, you never got there. I needed this job. I think I tried to bargain with HR lady, but she looked at me with the saddest eyes and said, “Don’t worry, you’re talented, you’ll get something else.” Oh, I thought this was the place you went to if you were talented? Apparently, it’s where you go to have your soul crushed and be banished from the golden gates of coolness.

Drinking had become sport and of course after such gently put news, I did what I did, I called one of our friends which didn’t have time for me and then I went to the bar and proceeded to angrily shoot Jameson, a lot of Jameson, luckily, ha luckily, the owner of the pub asked me if I wanted to work there. From the pearly gates of advertising to the familiar cage of waitressing, but at least I could be myself and have access to the liquid novocaine that helped me forget my life. I mean, I left New York, that was the highest of all achievements, to come back here because I wanted a wrought iron fence and wrap around balcony.

When people split up, so do the friends. There are always sides. My side was always with you. No matter what was going on with us or what could have been, I always chose you. People told me I was nuts and “how big of me” to continue to visit you, I thought that was a strange response. Why would I not visit the man who was a part of my whole life for 14 years. How could I not, no matter the circumstance. Those people don’t mean much to me any longer. It’s weird deleting that history, but it truly is a test of friendship. The ones who stand by your side when shit gets real, those are the people I want to let in. The hardest part is losing you. It’s not being able to talk about my day, or how some bitch cut me off on the way home, or laughing about some funny meme I saw today. The hell of it all is not losing those friendships we had, they had no problems forgetting us, but it’s knowing I have to walk past you in the crowd. It’s coming to terms with the end of the beginning of the end.

I decided this year I would stop trying to “herd” and finally become my truest self, the one who deserves to be asked to the dance. It took everything i had on Christmas day not to text. I received three messages that day. Yours was not one of them. It will be six months since my two unanswered texts to your family. The song is soon to be over, and as a million reasons float through my head, still, I stand unchosen and unfought for. Still it is you I cheer on, it’s you I want to have a conversation with, and it’s you who still understands me better than most. Through the years I’ve been replaced, forgotten, told I was never liked when we were together, and ignored, but I also gained some really amazing people in my life. Even my mom is my friend now! So, while the whispers subsided and life has gone on, and I muse at the fake friendships and the aloof nods of recognition, just know, I stand here, still fighting for you even though the fight for me ended a long time ago.