Letting Go

by Anna Luciano

         When saying good-bye isn’t sad, it’s called letting go.

         I think you all know what I mean. Although we have the best of intentions, sometimes things don’t work out. Sometimes people grow apart – a slow deterioration of all the things that once held you together. Sometimes we are forced apart – a drastic, sudden break. Either way, when it’s all said and done, saying good-bye can end up being a relief.

         I met Elizabeth my freshman year of college, and we immediately hit it off. She was an amazing girl – smart, lively, and silly – and we seemed to have so much in common. We had a lot of fun doing that typical freshman year girl thing - going out with our friends to drink and dance, hanging out in our dorm and talking about boys, skipping our 10:30 am classes because they were too early. As the year went on, our group of friends became more tightly knit, and the six of us were always together, “friends forever.” We thought.

         At the end of freshman year, Elizabeth had her heart broken and had a really hard time coping with it. As it happened, I was also heartbroken at the time, so we spent a lot of time together bonding over our pain. But over the summer I moved past it, while Elizabeth seemed to be wallowing in her pain, unwilling to move on. I remember getting a phone call from our friend Susan, saying that Elizabeth was losing it. Apparently, they were driving around town together, and Biggie’s “Juicy” came on. Since this was Susan’s favorite song, she cranked it up…for about 10 seconds before Elizabeth shut it off. Susan looked over to see Elizabeth freaking out, crying and shaking in the passenger seat. When she asked what was wrong, Elizabeth sobbed that the song reminded her of her lost love, and she couldn’t believe how insensitive Susan was being. She then demanded that Susan take her home. Susan and I both thought Elizabeth was being ridiculous, but as her friends, we figured we needed to be there for her – after all, that’s what friends are supposed to do, right?

         Once back to school sophomore year, Elizabeth began to really spiral out of control. While we kept on going out drinking and dancing at our favorite bars, acting silly around campus and town, and, occasionally, going to class and studying, Elizabeth couldn’t seem to handle herself. Every weekend she’d get drunk and end up driving back to her family’s house – 2 hours away - because only her mom could understand her pain. When given the opportunity, we would do what we could to calm her down, and she’d go back to being the cool girl that we loved – for a while. In March, she found a new boyfriend, and suddenly seemed like the girl we had loved at the beginning. Figuring the rough times were behind us, four of us decided to get a house off-campus together, and we moved on.

         After a fun summer, Elizabeth’s boyfriend broke up with her at the start of junior year. She lost it again, but this time she went off the deep-end. After an incident that began with her ditching us to go stalk her ex-boyfriend and ended with us, her roommates, having to beg a friend to drive us around town looking for her as she threatened to kill herself, Elizabeth began working on destroying our friendships. She started picking fights with all of us; telling us blatant lies about each other in an attempt to drive a wedge between the rest of us. We found out what she was doing, but couldn’t just let her go when she was so upset. We could all hypothesize about what her specific problems were – manic depression, low self-esteem, etc. – but since her shrink was happy to prescribe anti-depressants without any actual therapy, she never actually seemed to figure it out.

         When she decided to take a leave of absence for the second semester of our junior year, Elizabeth said she needed the time to really figure out what was going on with her. She swore up, down, and sideways that she was going to really take her therapy seriously – and we were all thrilled that she seemed to be taking responsibility for her own happiness. But after one or two sessions with her shrink, she said that she “couldn’t deal with this” all at once, and decided to stop going to the sessions. Since she didn’t have classes to slow her down, she started partying every night and sleeping all day. Her life was a train wreck, with us as helpless witnesses. She continued to lie to us about each other, trying to make us fight. One night, after getting pissed at one of our roommates for saying hello to her ex-boyfriend, she locked her out of the house at 3 am… and we lived in a ghetto. A few months later, as we got ready to re-sign our lease, she told the three of us that she didn’t know if she was coming back to school the next year, so she didn’t want to commit to living with us. Unfortunately, she waited to tell us until our landlord was there to pick up the lease. But, she apologized, as she always did, so we still tried to be good friends to her, figuring that she was just going through a hard time, and would get better.

         She didn’t. Finally, after three years of deceit and drama, she added the straw that broke the camel’s back. This time, the trust that Elizabeth betrayed was too big of a deal to just gloss over. When I confronted her about her betrayal, and about the multiple times she had lied to my face over the past years, she tried to skate around her actions by blaming it on her “mental state.” Livid, I called her later that night to tell her that I didn’t think we could be friends anymore, and that I didn’t want to see her for a long time, if ever. She didn’t say much to me, just that she understood. Two minutes after I hung up the phone, her mother called, hysterical because Elizabeth called and said she was going to kill herself. She told me that I needed to call the cops and get over there, because it would take her two hours to get to Elizabeth. I said I’d take care of it, and call her back.

         Susan and I called the police, gave them Elizabeth’s address, and told them that it was most likely that she’d try to OD on pills. We raced over to her place, getting pulled over for speeding on the way. Luckily, the cops had heard over the radio about the situation – “Oh, you’re friends with that girl?” - and ended up giving us an escort over there. We were greeted by three police cars, two ambulances, and a fire truck. Talk about calling all cars.

         We watched as they got Elizabeth out of her apartment, and drove her off to a mental institution for observation. We talked to the police to find out what we should tell her mother, and drove home. Exhausted and upset, I called her mom to give her the details…and ended up on the phone for an hour and a half as she yelled at me. Apparently, it was my fault that this had happened; I just didn’t have enough sympathy for Elizabeth and her “illness.” I needed to grow up, forgive and forget. About an hour into this lecture, I started getting ready to go out and drown my problems in a keg of beer, and only half-listened to her rant and rave. Finally, I told her that it was Elizabeth that needed to grow up, and that I was done babysitting her.

         A couple days later, her dad called and said, “It’s your responsibility as Elizabeth’s friend to stand by her, and forgive her for her mistakes. You have a responsibility to her.” I only made it a few minutes into this conversation before telling him that it was Elizabeth who had ditched her responsibilities as a friend, and that I didn’t owe anything to someone who obviously didn’t care about me.

         After I knew she was off of suicide watch, I sent Elizabeth an email saying that while I wasn’t ready to talk to her, I wanted her to know why I was so upset. So I told her how her actions made me feel, and explained that without being able to trust her, there just wasn’t a way for us to be friends right now. I said that after the anger passed, maybe we could talk. I hit send; a day later I got the craziest email I had ever seen. Full of things like “I’m sorry, but it’s not my fault…” and “I didn’t know what I was doing…” I finally realized that she had no idea how to take responsibility for her own actions. I didn’t bother to respond to her; I had nothing left to say. How do you argue with someone that has no sense of reality, who refuses to admit that they made a mistake?

         After a few weeks, she gave up on the idea of staying at school, and moved home to her parents’ house. Time passed, and I eventually got over the anger and started missing her, and hoping that she was getting the help she needed. I’ve heard she’s changed a lot since then, that she’s happy and stable again, and I’m glad. Sometimes I wonder if we could renew our friendship, and somehow get back to the good times. But, after thinking about it, I always come to the same conclusion. Our time to be friends has passed. I’m sure we both learned important lessons from each other – some good, some not so good – and enjoyed most of the time we had together. But it’s over… and I’m happy.

         I let go.

~ ~ ~

         Anna Luciano grew up in Southern California, before traveling across country to attend Providence College.  After graduating, she moved to Boston, where she has been living for the past few years.  While she loves Boston, she will always be a California girl at heart.