New Leaves

On the subject of Teresa, there are some bright, magnanimous memories, and there are also some really terrible ones. For a little over a year, she was my best friend. Lucy and I weren't the closest of friends junior year and we remedied a good portion of that senior year, but it was Teresa that I bonded most with. Coco was there, too, but Reesa and I were together more often and Coco was busy with her romantic interests.

It's kind of funny how it all worked out. Reesa always saved time for her friends when she was dating Nick. I wasn't the biggest fan of him (and he turned into a giant d-bag once they were really, officially over), but he wasn't the most interesting person, so it was easy for her to divide up her time between him and friends and family.

At my "good riddance" party the day before I left for my 5 day roadtrip across the continental US, Coco cried when she said goodbye to me. I only cried when I said goodbye to Teresa, even though she was going the same way 19 days after me.

That was when everything changed. I didn't even know what was happening until it was all over.

I made all sorts of new friends and new best friends, and I did my best to keep my old friends, too. Maybe I changed. I don't really know. Maybe I was just adapting. Maybe that's what Teresa did, too.

Looking through the old "love" book we used to write in, I could see that we had interesting and at least semi-thoughtful conversations. Sometimes it was just funny stuff, or random stuff, but most of the time, it was stuff that really mattered to us.

At some point during our first year in college, those conversations stopped. When I wanted or needed to say something that mattered, she had to talk about boys. Or sex. Or how what's-his-face said such and such to her and how that made her want to drop her pants.

When I got back to this coast during the summer, I found out how often she'd lied to me to keep me from hating her or being disappointed in her. And honestly, if she'd just been up front about it, I would've been angry, but at least I would still have had some respect for her character.

Coco, Nelle and I confronted her about her behavior last summer, too. She promised to be different, and with her boyfriend on the east coast, she was different. She was herself. Or, well, one version of herself. I can't pretend I don't know how people edit their social selves to keep it separate from their alone selves. But either way, she was back to "normal" and we were all pretty happy about it. But in the back of our minds we knew, the moment she went back there, she'd just fall back into that new persona and probably get worse.

We were right.

At first, I only got a few texts from her, sometimes of pictures of her and Ty, or her new haircut, and the like. Then there was nothing. For about five months, there was complete silence. One day, I got a text from her saying she had a box in my grandparents' storage and could I please be her owl and let my grandparents know she wanted it back. I gave her my grandparents' number and told her to figure it out herself. After that, I didn't hear anything else from her until the day I announced on facebook that I was going back to PA for spring break. We talked a little about it, she brought up the storage thing again ('cause she just never got around to doing anything about it), and that was the end of it.

I was shocked, therefore, when I looked on facebook yesterday and discovered that she'd tagged me in a note titled "This is probably wayyy long overdue..." She addressed about 8 of us directly, and in the letter to me she said she knew what I thought had happened to our friendship.

It's not exactly hard to figure out. She dropped her dignity with her pants and I didn't bother to keep in contact. I would've just heard the same sex stories over and over again. Why bother?

Apparently, though, she's turning over a new leaf. Again.

I still love her, even if I have to think back to all the good times we had senior year to acknowledge it, but I can't help but wonder: How long will it last THIS time...?