---

I think I made you up inside my head - chapter three

Chapter three my select few darlings! Yes, it’s already on wattpad (sorry if you’ve read it already) but I like to share!

Are you ready kids?

Chapter Three - I am only what you made me. I am only a reflection of you

Trigger warning - mental health issues and blood/gore.

If you're not comfortable, please skip. 💛

******************************************

Sharp tears prickled in his hazel eyes as the ability to form coherent words seemed to escape him. He had known the minor details surrounding Lindsay's untimely death - a reality tv darling dropping dead was headline-worthy - but her family were tight-lipped about the exact circumstances of her demise. His mind raced as he tried to comprehend how Izzy had known all of this; her knowledge rivalled that of a fly on the bathroom wall. As if she could hear his innermost thoughts, Izzy answered his unspoken question.

"I knew the right people to ask," she told him, brushing the hair out from in front of her eyes, "I knew she didn't just die. I wasn't going to let her death be treated in such a blasé fashion."

Axel choked, the words lodged deeply in his throat. "Bu- I mean... how did you get the mirror?"

"I found it one day. It was in a box on my doorstep. Any sane person would leave it be, but if the media established anything, I'm clearly not seen as sane. So I opened it. I don't know who sent it to me. My money's on a producer who revels in the sadistic thrill derived from the torment and suffering we went through. I couldn't throw it away though, because what would be left of her if I did? She was already condemned to the ground. I wasn't going to be the one to throw her memory to the wind."

Izzy looked to her left, her reflection dimly lit in the glass cabinet on the far wall. "In my head... all I think of is when it's all over, is this how I'll be defined? The final victim of Total Drama... that's etched into my brain. I'll become another knick-knack in a hall of curiosities. We're no longer people in here, Axel, we're collectables."

Thoughts bounced around erratically in Axel's head - conflicting notions manifesting like an angel and a devil on his shoulder. In front of him was a woman who was struggling with the turmoil outliving all of her friends. Yet, the magnetic pull of the almighty dollar swayed his actions towards chasing stardom.

He lightly gripped her forearm, giving her his best convincing empathetic smile.

"Tell me the stories. Let the voices out of the purgatory that is your mind. Everything...one, everyone in here will not be relegated to the sidelines, I won't let that happen." Axel assured Izzy, his warm smile twitching at the corners of his mouth.

Ignoring the suspicion that washed over her thoughts - for the time being at least - Izzy continued walking down the aisles of shelves. Axel shadowed her, following a few paces behind, mindlessly fiddling with the items on display. Two tarnished faux-gold lockets sat near each other, the two halves of the 'BFF' heart separate from one another. As he went to push the two sections together, Izzy stopped him abruptly and pushed his hand away.

"No," she started, startling Axel with the sudden sternness. "They can't be together. They don't share a heart anymore."

"So what? They grew out of being obnoxious teenage girls and went their separate ways. Big fucking deal!"

She stared daggers into him, holding the shelving for support. "You've got no idea, kid. Just because the sun's covered, it doesn't mean your shadow's gone."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As far as appearances were concerned, Katie and Sadie were almost each other's doubles. Matching short pigtails with bright pink hair ties, coordinated short shorts, crop-tops and wedged sandals... the two looked like they fell from opposite sides of a funhouse mirror. To all of us on the cast, and the audience at home, no doubt, the only differentiating factor between the two was their build. Katie was slim and taller than Sadie by about four inches, whereas Sadie was shorter and carried more weight.

The two 'BFFL's sat together on the stairs leading to the dock, ready to film their segment for the opening sequence. Waiting for the crew to finish setting up the camera equipment, Katie busies herself with refastening her hair ties.

"Okay girls," an unseen producer informs them, "we need your best-infatuated expression. So give up wide eyes, big smiles, the whole nine yards."

The girls nod in response, awaiting their cue. Sadie clasped her hands against her chest - a wide smile plastered on her face - and Katie bit her lip coyly.

"And.... cut. Alright, move set to the dock for Beth's fire-baton stunt. Doug, remember the extinguisher this time." The producer called about. "Great job, girls. Especially you, Katie. That lip bite was dynamic."

Sadie looked to her right at her best friend. "Wait, you bit your lip? We agreed on a wide-mouthed smile."

"It's no big deal, I just wanted to try something different," Katie shrugged, readjusting her shoulder strap. "We can't always be the same, you know?"

Personality-wise, once you got to know them separately, it was like night and day. Katie was free-spirited, leading with her heart. Her passion for all things fashion was evident through her and Sadie's matching outfits and her behind-the-scenes chats with the likes of Lindsay and Heather. Sadie, on the other hand, was more logical, leading with her head. She was more likely to be the sheep as opposed to the shepherd. And when Katie was eliminated early? It was like leading a lamb to the slaughter.

Sadie sat on a jagged log at the campfire, head in her hands violently sobbing. Bridgette futilely offered her support, attempting to coax the girl from her hysterical state.

"Hey, Sadie, it'll be okay. You've got all us Killer Bass on your side." Bridgette lightly rubbed circles on the crying girl's back.

"No!" Sadie snapped at Bridgette, tears staining her cheeks. "It's not okay! I need Katie. When she's not near me, I break out in hives. She's my everything! I need her more than oxygen! Without her... I'll just die!"

Concerned expressions flashed on the faces of their fellow teammates as Sadie's wails echoed through the woods of Camp Wawanakwa. She clutched the debris from the dock closer to her chest; small cracks formed as wooden shrapnel shattered from around the edges.

What we thought back then was just a toxic 'uber' friendship between two sixteen-year-old girls was far more deep-rooted than any of us anticipated. Regarding Sadie... the best way to sum that up is to quote my dearly missed best friend Noah: 'Sadie is a whackjob with more baggage than an airport terminal'. But I suppose that is giving her a disservice. Upon Katie's departure, Chris was notified by Sadie's therapist of the extent of her mental state. I found out too because back then, well, let's just say you couldn't leave me in the dark for too long.

Sadie's childhood wasn't easy in the slightest. Her relationship with her birth parents was relatively non-existent. Therefore, she was surrendered into the custody of the state. The conveyor belt life of passing through the foster care system took a toll on the girl, with an absence of permanent parental love leaving holes in her heart. Her talkative nature and inhibitions to talk and hug strangers lead to her first visit to the therapist. She was a clear cut case for the child behavioural scientists: disinhibited social engagement disorder, an attachment disorder. Looking back, this was evident in all her future actions, particularly those with Katie.

The bell rang on the first day of their last year of high school. Sadie - dressed as per usual in fuchsia shorts and a striped crop top - eagerly skipped over to the locker of her best friend. As the locker door slammed and her friend came into view, the excited expression on Sadie's face dropped.

"K-Katie? What's this?" Sadie questioned, holding her sticker-covered folder flush against her chest.

Katie raised an eyebrow quizzically, straightening out her paper timetable to find her first classes location.

"What do you mean, Sadie?"

"I mean that!" the shorter girl exclaimed, gesturing at Katie's outfit. The taller girl had moved away from her typical Total Drama outfit, substituting it with a pair of denim jeans and a pastel pink cardigan.

"Oh, this? I just wanted to branch out a bit. I mean, matching outfits? What are we, twins?"

Katie giggled at her observation, with Sadie clearly missing the joke.

"Anyway, I have to get to English, but I'll see you around, yeah?" Katie chirped before walking off with two other girls.

Sadie stalked over to Katie's locker, using a spare hairpin to open it. Her heart broke upon looking at its contents. Gone were the photos of her and Sadie plastered onto her locker door. Cutouts from fashion magazines and runway shows lay in their wake and stuffed under a pile of books was the BFF necklace Sadie gifted her years prior.

Following their graduation, the pair had drifted apart. Katie received an offer to the most prestigious fashion school in Canada and left their small town for Toronto. Unbeknownst to her, Sadie followed suit and got a job at a sewing goods store. Sadie became Katie's shadow, desperately following her every move. Her morning routine was memorised, her coffee order became part of her mental wallpaper. Sadie's infatuation only grew, as in her mind, distance made the heart grow fonder. If only Katie knew that this distance was all of a few metres.

A harsh squeak dripped from the tired hinges of the ladder as Sadie climbed up the rungs, fastening something onto her wall. For her neighbours, the sound had become a part of their daily lives, as day after day, Sadie adhered more photos on the apartment wall. The collage of the lush green of leaves, the yellow of the bustling taxis and blue of the cloudless sky swirled around on the wall, catching a person's attention as they entered the room. A timber coffee table was neatly placed on the left, adorned with additional photo frames and miscellaneous decorations. The centrepiece to her display shimmered brightly when the morning sun shone through the gap in the curtains. Perched in a small, open velvet lines box was one half of a golden heart-shaped 'BFF' necklace.

Sadie took a step back and tilted her head, taking in the view from as many angles as she could. She had finally achieved the pinnacle of her undying love and infatuation for her former 'BFFL'. Neatly arranged across the length of the wall was a mural, dedicated to her muse, to the reason she woke up every morning. Candid photos of Katie walking down the street, exiting cars and meeting friends for coffee dates were carefully taken by the shadow she didn't know that she had.

A year and a half passed. There was a stark dichotomy between Katie and Sadie's lives. The final year of her fashion degree was approaching quickly, and Katie was not entering it alone. I don't know how many of us predicted it - probably Noah with his impeccable 'gaydar' - but Katie had fallen in love with an architecture student called Daisy. From what was depicted on their respective social media accounts, it was clear to us that they were enamoured with one another. The presence of another woman in Katie's life infuriated Sadie, as she believed that that position was reserved for her and her alone.

Then came the drop in the ocean that caused the whole tsunami. If it wasn't for Katie's selfless nature... well, I imagine things would've turned out a lot differently.

Katie sat cross-legged on the couch, a decorative throw rug draped across her lap. Their rescue cat, Archibald - a male calico - rested behind her head, purring with content as she opened her laptop. Her fingers barely touched the trackpad as she scrolled through her Facebook feed, bypassing ads for strange items and memes about the current political climate.

"Ekaterina," an auburn-haired girl walked through the doorway, a basket of washing in her hands. "I'm making something for lunch after I finish this washing. I'll probably use what's left in the fridge and make a frittata. D'you want some?"

"Ooh, yes please, Dais," Katie smiled at her partner, who poked her tongue out at the use of her nickname.

Katie clicked on her latest post to see who had reacted and liked. A smile crept across Katie's face as she clicked onto the picture: a photoshoot in a field on flowers where a bright ring sparkled on Katie's ring finger. She looked down at her left hand, still in a state of shock at Daisy's proposal. One name stuck out as Katie scrolled through the comments. She hadn't thought of them for years now and wondered what they were getting up to.

She clicked on their profile to compose a new message. Daisy walked up behind her and scratched Archibald's head before planting a kiss behind Katie's ear.

"Oooh, who are you talking to? Not your girlfriend, I hope," Daisy taunted, giggling breathlessly.

Katie threw her head back against the couch cushion and looked up at her fiancée.

"Yeah, I'm shopping elsewhere. I need someone who appreciates my nicknames!" Katie threw back, puffing her cheeks out comically. "No, you goose. It's this girl I used to go to school with. It's been forever and a day, and I thought I'd see how she's going."

"Sadie Calhoun... isn't she that one you went on that show with?"

"Yeah... I felt like such a poser back then. I don't think I've ever squealed since," Katie responded.

"Hey, people change. I had such a crush on you when I saw you on TV, and look now!" Daisy told her before walking away towards the kitchen. "I snagged the girl of my dreams!"

Katie laughed as she typed an introductory line, sending it through before closing her laptop.

*********

A sudden buzz from her phone against the wooden table shook Sadie out of her delirium. She had been sat before her photo wall, carefully cutting out photos of her face for what could have been hours. Paper scraps lined the wooden flooring like irregular speckles of snow as Sadie rose to her feet. Picking up her phone, her eyes shone brightly with its blue light as a squeal escaped from between her lips.

On her screen - behind the myriad of cracks and scratches - sat a notification that held Sadie's heart in a tight grip: Message request from Ekaterina Byers.

If this were a sitcom, I'm sure Sadie would've pinched herself at that moment to assure that she wasn't dreaming. But with one olive branch in the form of an instant message, Katie had signed her own death warrant.

Sadie opened the notification with bated breath, her cheeks aching from the smile that was cemented in place. Her heart fluttered with anxious butterflies as she read the message.

Ekaterina Byers:

"Hi, Sadie. I wonder if you remember me, probably not! High school seems like forever ago! Haha! 😝  I just thought I'd reach out and see if you wanted to get a coffee sometime and just catch up on life!"

The words swirled and danced before Sadie, who lovingly took in every single one with deep adoration and love. Everything she had wanted to tell her, the praise she had wanted to shower Katie in bounced around in her head. She placed her phone down, forcing herself to calm down before she wrote a response.

Sadie Calhoun:

"Oh, hi! OMG! Of course, I remember you! I'd love to catch up! You're the busy fashion designer, so you pick a time when you can squeeze an old friend in! 😎 💕" Watching the three dots in the bottom left corner caused Sadie's breath to hitch in her throat. She was typing... Katie was typing. They'd finally be reunited, not just from behind a camera lens. She felt as if she was in the painting 'The Creation of Adam', just a fingers touch away from her god, her whole world.

Ekaterina Byers:

"Haha, as if! I'm not there yet 😂  Would next Friday suit? Say about 9am at the Good Coffee Co. I need to hand in my portfolio at 8:30 so that'd work well."

Impulsively, acting out of desperation alone, Sadie immediately responded.

Sadie Calhoun:

"Yes! I'll be there! See you soon, Katie! 💕"

Sadie locked her phone before focusing her attention back to her craft. She picked up her scissors, skilfully manoeuvring around the edges of the photos. She stuck the product onto the wall and gazed upon it proudly. Hundreds of small cut out photos of her head were plastered on the wall, covering up any person Katie was with, replacing them with herself.

They did meet up, that much we do know. Testimonials from five different individuals confirmed that they saw the two girls at that café on Friday the 25th. What they talked about is up for speculation, because that stayed between the two of them. Why were testimonials needed if two young adults were just catching up over a cup of coffee? Because that was the last time Sadie Calhoun and Ekaterina 'Katie' Byers were seen alive.

Katie's eyelids drooped as she sat in the passenger seat of Sadie's car. Sadie - the 'good samaritan' that she was - had offered to drive Katie home after she suddenly felt light-headed following her coffee. Sadie parked in the driveway and opened Katie's door for her, helping her up as she tiredly hobbled towards the front door. Katie wearily collapsed onto the couch, her eyes barely registering the environment around her. She could hear faint crashing and shattering sounds as she struggled to keep her eyes open. She looked down upon the couch she was dozing on and sat up with a start.

"This isn't my house," she whispered to herself, scanning the room for any familiar objects. She froze in place when she spotted something utterly recognisable to her: her face. Hundreds of different angles of her face created a mosaic, a shrine to a friendship that was never meant to last.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?"

Sadie smiled sweetly as she entered the room. "It couldn't be anything but. Not when the subject is as exquisite as you."

Confusion washed over Katie's face as Sadie approached her, a clothed parcel delicately held in her hands. Sadie reached up to caress her old friend's cheek; Katie snaked away from the touch, petrified of the girl in front of her.

"Hmm. That's the problem, isn't it?" Sadie soliloquised, her grey eyes meeting Katie's scared onyx eyes. "You stopped being Katie. You stopped being my best friend. I know Katie is living in those photos, not 'Ekaterina'. Katie wouldn't have left me. No, not at all. Forever isn't a term to just throw around."

Black tears dripped down Katie's face as she silently sobbed. "W-we were kids. What we were wa-wasn't healthy. We're two separate people, Sadie! I couldn't live being so connected to a shadow. I wanted t-to shine on my own."

"But I don't wanna be separate people! I want to be with you... to be you. To never be apart from you!" Sadie passionately yelled as Katie started to slump down in front of her. The world around her became dark as her lids closed tightly. As her consciousness drifted, a phrase echoed through her head.

"Don't worry now. We'll never be apart again."

*********

Excruciating pain emanating from her side woke her with a jolt. A dull haze covered her field of vision, but as she pulled her hand away from her waist, she could see it as clear as day. A warm layer of blood coated her hand like a glove. Her eyes slowly settled to the room she was in. Metres ahead of her was the collage of photos, but the furniture has been removed, leaving a wide-open space.

Her fingers felt around to find the source of the pain, coming across thick strands of string attached to her waist. A scream silently bubbled up inside her, threatening to explode.

Rough, uneven strands of double-wound fishing wire had been haphazardly sewn into both her and Sadie's sides, connecting them to each other.

A groggy smile spread across Sadie's plump cheeks as she revelled in her actions. "I told you we'll never be apart again."

An extreme shock was the only emotion Katie was able to come to terms with. Her body was statuesque; set in place by a fear-driven paralysis. A dryness inhabited her mouth, inhibiting her ability to swallow the truth in front of her. The room swayed and distorted around her - a prison cell painted with her face - as she forced her eyelids shut. This couldn't be reality. It was the sick dream of a girl trapped in the suffocating world of a teenage girl.

The pain Sadie felt in her abdomen only further fuelled her pleasure, letting every wave of pain wash over her in euphoric ecstasy. Her heart felt complete again as if she had regained a long-lost limb.

"I knew we'd become one again," Sadie hummed, intoxicated by being in Katie's presence. "Daisy was just a placeholder... keeping the bed warm for me. With every thread... every stitch... our closeness is now defined. We'll never be apart again. Best friends for life."

"...for...life," Katie mumbled, fresh blood weeping from her wounds.

Night and day passed slowly, the shadows cast from the pair forming contorted, misshapen dark splotches on the walls. A sickening warmth surrounded Katie, whose heartbeat pounded heavily in her ears. Her waist was bruising a deep purple, with the surrounding blood vessels snaking across her abdomen. Sadie was shaken awake by Katie's convulsions as her body became slick with a layer of sweat.

"Katie? I'm here, it's okay."

"I don't feel good... I want Daisy," Katie slurred, lazily searching the room for her partner.

The 'tethering' procedure was as wildly unsuccessful as one could imagine. Sadie's homemade suture kit - a sharpened metal knitting needle and fishing line - only managed to pierce through Katie's large intestine. Bile and stool seeped into her abdomen, eventually finding their way into her bloodstream. The coroner estimated she died two days later of septic shock.

A thin beam of light eclipsed the drawn curtains and rested on Sadie's face as dawn broke. Her hand moved softly to caress Katie's hand; a stiff claw lay in her wake. An overwhelming panic flooded Sadie's system as she attempted to wake the other girl from her 'deep' slumber. Half-lidded blood-red eyes stared back at Sadie, a trickle of dried blood pooled at her temple. Sadie's heart shattered like a golden locket as she cradled the limp body in her arms, pulling the skin taut around her suture wounds. The shadow had won. It had succeeded in snuffing out what was left of the light.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"What happened to Sadie in the end?" Axel asked, taking a minute amount of sadistic glee from the story.

Izzy turned to face the young man. A single tear crept down her cheek as she fiddled with her rings. "She refused to live without Katie. She starved to death, all the while she left Katie's decomposing corpse attached to her hip like a growth."

Izzy wiped the tear from her eye, suppressing sniffles as Axel glanced around the room.

"Hmm...Alright. Who's next then?"

A bi girls story

As a teenybopper I remember fantasizing about boys and coming up with senarios in my head. One day it was randomly a girl in my thoughts.

In summer 2015 I kissed a girl “A” (my bestfriend at the time) idk why part of me just really wanted to and she kissed me back, a boy saw (an ex it’s a small town) and was SHOCKED but we played it off. Later the “A” and I are home alone and I totally kissed her, pushed her up against the wall and everything. She was my first make out too. Throughout the summer we would have sleepovers and make out and it got as far as being shirtless and grinding (and I came wtf??) The whole time we would ask eachother if we’re straight or not and I was so like mind boggled that I was like “im straight, and we’re just friends who kiss” looking back now we were totally girlfriends that summer.

After that summer I was at a sleep over (in the city now) with my straight best friend “B” (100%) and another girl “S” and we were all friends. For some reason we started giving eachother hickeys and my straight bff “B” thought it was hilarious but I was like so into giving “S” hickeys that after I got sooooo nervous. We were all laying in her big bed together and my bff “B” fell asleep and I was so nervous that I kept shaking uncontrollably and she kept asking why. We were cuddling and so close and I can’t remember what I said but I think I told her I wanted to kiss her and we did and it’s was so amazing. Then weeks later we all had another sleep over and I was more confident this time and I kissed her and she kissed me back but out of no where “S” got up and was all nervous and I was sad that it ended but scared that she was not happy about something. After that she moved schools and I heard from my bff “B” that she felt really awkward about it all. Then she’d start posting about her “gf” (it was supposed to be platonic to the rest of the world) but as she posted pics or vids of them kissing I knew it was real for one of them at least.

In grade 11 a new girl came into the school, she was short and had the best but ever.. I couldn’t help but look. We ended up snapping and FaceTiming a few times and she wanted me to sleep over and she talked about us doing shit. She had a boyfriend at the time and he said he was ok with her experimenting. I was so excited to go over, and she started snapping me her in the bath and then her tits but she started snapping me just her vagina and I was not ready for that. The sleepover never happened :/. Yearssss later I’m in the city at the club and she’s there. I dance with her can call her hot and she says something like it’s been a while. We part ways.

I had a few boyfriends / flings in between then and finally made out with some boys and it was all really amazing too! The next summer I didn’t want to go back to the small town cause I had met this guy “D”! But I went back anyways.

I got a boyfriend in this town in summer 2016 and we told eachother we loved one another a few weeks into dating. During this summer I had a little fling with a girl “J” who at the same time was dating my ex-crush of 3 years who his letter is “V”. We tried kissing in front of both our boys they were just like wtf ok.

My boyfriend and I went long distance for a year while I went back to the city for school. During this time I went to a party with a bunch of people from my grade and idk why but I started talking to this girl “H” and straight up asked her (while drunk) if she ever thought about being with girls and she admitted yes and I kissed her. People saw and she got awkward about it. Another friend who saw got awkward around me after too. Another friend knew I’ve kissed other girls and I told her I was thinking about this party girl “H” and she told me that “H” felt weird about it after it happened. I let it go. During this time I also kissed a boy “J” at a party. And more girls at a different party (including my straight best friend “B” while she was drunk. I convinced her to kiss me I just wanted to see how she kissed lol). When prom came boy “J” had a girlfriend and we saw eachother at prom with our dates (“J” knew at the time that I had a boyfriend when I kissed him at the party) he just said hey Sam and looked at me with side eye but flirtation??? I said hey back .. my boyfriend knew that was the guy.

Fast forward a year and I moved in with my boyfriend in the small town. We were completely in love until we moved in together. Things get hard when you graduate high school and move 15 hours away with your boyfriend the day after. I cheated on him with a man “K” a year later and again 6 months after that, with “D” from years after he and I were a thing.

During the second time I was back in the city at the club dancing with the cheat “D” and my bffs sister “K” (guy “D” had a huge crush on girl “K” for the longest time). I’m between them both, my front grinding this girls ass and my ass grinding on this guy. This is the moment I felt true complete bliss and I knew then in that exact moment that I was bisexual. I then admitted it to my bestfriend “B” days later, the first person I told out loud and she said “I’ve known that since girl “S” in grade 10” (at this point we’re on our second year out of high school) Guess I must be obvious.

This guy “D” though he accepted my bisexuality in the moment and made me feel empowered and turned on by it. He was turned on by it. It just felt so good to be with someone so open. Actually I had another boy “C” who felt the same and it felt so good to me for them to enjoy me just being bisexual me. (Funny story this boy “C” dated the girl I had kissed in the sleepovers “S” and so I told him about how we kissed the same girl and he was so horny over it ahhh!)

Bring us to one month ago and (6months after that last cheat with “D”) and I go to another party in the small town now. I’m fucking plastered but I somehow scavenge out the lesbian from the pack of girls who is “M” 😍. We start talking and I guess I’m totally attracted to her. I think I kissed her without her wanting it at first. I kissed her a lot that night. Everyone saw too. We walked home with everyone and I held her hand the whole way. We added eachother on snap.

I told my boyfriend long ago that I’m bisexual and he told me I’m not. I tell him again and he says we could have a three sum. After kissing “M” I got weird cause he considers it cheating and I felt horrible for doing it again. I told him and my boyfriend said “I’m sorry but Im not into that. I know some guys are but I’m not” I told him my fantasy of having us be in a three way relationships with a girl. He could have two girls to fuck and I could have the best of Both worlds. He could get us both pregnant and our kids would be siblings. He was not intrigued by this idea at all.

“M” and I want to hang out but now I feel like I can’t hang out with her cause I know I won’t be able to control myself. She came into my work the other day for a dental appointment. She walks in wearing all black, her blonde hair shimmering in the light contrasting to the black. She has a big leather jacket and a helmet in hand, wearing big black boots. Her colourful tattoos showing on her arms making her look so tough but artistic. We get to chatting as I show her to her exam room. She forgot that I worked there and I commented on the fact that she rides a motorcycle. A Honda 500 (can’t remember the model) - I tell her I’ve always wanted to ride but my parents never let me. I’m leaning on the counter trying to look chill and cool. She said riding a bike is the gayest thing to do (I thought she meant like “gay insult” but she meant “gay homosexual”). I bet the whole office could hear the flirtation and I only hope that they think it’s just banter. She’s getting ready to leave now so I pretend to busy myself with paper work at the front so I can watch her leave. As she’s leaving I walk to the back and turn over my sholder, us making eye contact and waving to eachother. I watch her ride her motorcycle with one hand after saying she just started riding and is getting used to it. She looked like a dream.

I snap her the next day asking how the work day is since I of course work days and she works nights. She replys with something calling me cutie and sending heart eye emojis. We flirt a bit more and she says she wants to hangout soon since she’s leaving for college again. I leave for vacation so I tell her aug 25th and 26th I’m back and can hang out. She said she leaves the 27th but can chill the 26th. I ask her what she wants to do (idk if she knows I have a boyfriend but I have to tell her). She says “I don’t think we’ll be bored😉”

Now I’m day dreaming about her and I have a boyfriend. I don’t know what I should do but I now know that the term “once a cheater always a cheater” is true. I know my desires will win. But can you really blame a Gemini; we are so torn between being two people and leading two different lives that we are greedy and take as much as we can of everything.

I also have a crush on my boss, a smart, intelligent, artistic and wholesome girl dentist, who is also a Gemini and born a decade and two days before me. This life is a struggle.

—

I’ve been thinking lately of talking to a therapist. My life is fucked up. I’m so torn between where I am and where I want to be. I don’t even know where I want to be .. I thought right where I am was it but I’m not so sure. I want to leave this town and go back to the city and go to school but I’m living the life I wanted here. I just don’t want this settled down family life just yet. I’m dental assisting without having gone to school for it so I feel like I can’t be proud of what I do. I’m a dance instructor with someone I can’t even handle anymore because of their greed and want to have my own control over it. I’m torn between wanting to be in a relationship and wanting to be single. Between wanting to be with a boy and with a girl. I miss my family but I moved here to get away from that toxic household (not toxic when not living with the parents). I have not been officially diagnose but I know I have OCD and trichotilomania (a disorder causing you to involuntary pull out your body hair). I only pulled my eyelashes but when I tried to stop I just started picking my skin and now I have the worst acne and scaring. I need help. My house is either spotless or a complete disaster. also I’m in the closet for most of everything and I’m nervous to what my family and coworkers will think/feel. Everyone else idgaf but when you’re so close and personal and you come out it shocks people and then the women don’t want to get to close to you in fear that you’re attracted to them. And the parents would be ok with it but they’d just be shocked.

I’m gunna ask the girl to hang out tonight and we’ll probably make out. Hopefully we fuck.

#horrible person

2017

I rang in 2017 drunk and crying. I left a New Year’s Eve Party where all my friends and I drank down the clock and M and I went home, and I had been obsessed with “Love More” for a few weeks so as soon as we got back to the house I put it on over the stereo. Anyway about ten seconds in I started sobbing and I couldn’t, for the life of me, explain why. (I wasn’t even sad! It’s just such a beautiful song!) M just put his arm around me and kind of half-laughed and told me it was going to be okay in a quizzical but very convincing way and eventually I stopped crying and the song played itself out. I think that about sums it up.

Anyway I think we can all agree that 2017 was a weird year in a grand sense, which I don’t feel compelled or equipped to speak to. But it was weird in a personal sense, too. The year started in that mass of feelings for me; I dyed my hair pink; I lost someone I cared about deeply, which hurt in a place I didn’t expect or understand. The other side of that month was the Women’s March: housing twenty friends from Boston and Brooklyn and elsewhere in a spirit of earnest and viable and real solidarity that nearly broke my heart.

In the spring I worked a lot, and eventually got to travel across the country and fall in love with a couple different cities: New York (Life After Youth, celebrating my 25th); Seattle (Bois Naufrage, fancy coffee, riding the bus); Austin (freeways, rental car, KUTX, wildflowers). In the summer, Keeper put out a tape – bittersweet timing, just before Sam moved back to Texas – and I got a few days on the Cape with the crew. I worked weekends and drank green juice and read novels. In the fall I got really into that Fever Ray song and memorized the opening passage of The Argonauts and finally made it to DIA: Beacon.

Overall, I think, it’s been a head-above-water kind of year for me, where I mainly got caught in a cycle of exist-process-react-exist without creating much. I spent a lot of time thinking about my feelings but still can’t exactly mark the growth. Sometimes stillness is a sign of change, though; maybe I’ll count that one as a win. So here’s a list of 10 things (big and small!) that I saw, heard, watched, made, felt and loved in 2017, that helped me get through the year.

The Heart Season: “No”

Before this year became the kind of dumpster fire in which you hear everyday about new ways that powerful, prominent men treat the women around them terribly, The Heart was talking about consent in a genuinely nuanced, genuinely feminist way. The “No” season was four episodes long, during which host Kaitlin Prest stared down specific instances in her own life where consent’s gray area reared its fucked-up face, and explored where the experiences left her – how they influenced her sense of self, how they shaped and informed her future sexual (and non-sexual!) encounters. And then she broadened the scope, ignoring the easier narratives – “yes means yes,” “no means no,” “consent is sexy!!!!”, rhetorical devices so exhausted and exhausting – and instead asked harder, realer questions about the intersections of desire, fear, gender, pleasure, and autonomy. It gave me language I didn’t know I needed and set a model for a kind of audio storytelling I didn’t know was possible. I wish they played this at every college orientation across the country.

Turning The Tables

What if we appreciated women’s art apart from maleness entirely? What would it look like to tell the story of popular music through only women’s greatness? That was, crudely put, the mission of the list of the 150 Greatest Albums Made By Women that NPR Music published this year. Being part of this project was huge: it meant absorbing massive amounts of history, rethinking canon, getting to be an editor(!), working with some of my biggest professional idols. Mostly, though, it meant devoting much of my working life to the intersection of radical feminism and rock and roll. What a dream.

Drag

I was drawn to art that felt genuinely subversive this year, but it mainly played out in moments of surprise: disappointment from expectations I didn’t realize I held being left unmet; utter radiant joy when this need I didn’t know I had was fulfilled. Maybe the most memorable time it happened was in June, at GAY/BASH, a monthly experimental drag show in D.C. It was the first time I saw drag IRL, which would maybe have felt subversive no matter what – but probably few things would have matched watching a drag queen in a red white & blue housewife dress penetrate the eyeholes of a Trump mask with a strap-on. Incredible! Tell me you can watch that and feel unmoved. My friends and I went back to GAY/BASH every month after that. The music was always perfect: The Knife and Paramore and No Doubt and Cher, etc. But mostly what felt so powerful was the company: being in explicitly gay spaces full of gay and queer people, where abject expressions of sexuality and of gender trouble felt neither like threats nor invitations to violence.

There was also, of course, Sasha Velour, the cerebral art-queen who was crowned this year’s winner of Rupaul’s Drag Race. I saw her on tour with other season 9 queens this summer; her lip-sync of “Praying” by Kesha was perhaps, no lie, the most moving musical performance I saw in 2017. She embodied and embraced the reality so many of us face as women and queer people: victims and victors, agents and acted-on, mired in both hope and fear on a near-constant basis. It was transcendent. 

Ramen

On a less serious note, D.C. is, like many cities, in the midst of a ramen craze right now, and if I’m honest I spent an inordinate amount of the year benefiting from it! And from the fact that a few places will even deliver ramen right to your house if you have the right app! (Also, there’s a lot to be said about cultural appropriation, the devaluing of non-Western food traditions, etc. in these contexts; I am trying to keep learning and will leave the explanations to folks smarter than I.)

Tank And The Bangas

I called this band the “best band in America” all year and I meant it. Their Tiny Desk concert was both an exhale (after the stress of running the Contest itself) and an inhale (before an unrelenting and enthralling month of tour with them). I saw Tank and the Bangas perform eight times in 2017; their positivity never got stale, their exuberance never felt forced, their passion never wavered. They sound like no one else I know. Goddamn, I love this band. The best band in America!

Therapy

I went back to therapy this year after not really going since childhood but thinking about finding someone to talk to and being jealous of friends’ casual off-hand remarks about their therapists for years. I went mostly because of this thing that happened last December involving some brutal unkindness from a loved one that was so vicious yet unexpected it left me feeling startled and knocked off course, like having been shoved from a great height and, after shaking off the dust, finding myself very alone. I thought it was a minor disturbance but it actually burrowed pretty deep into me and I wound up freaked out about a bunch of stuff, so long story short: I finally found someone to talk to.

I will save my breath about how mental health care should be accessible and de-stigmatized. I will say that therapy made my year better in a lot of ways; mostly, in that I had a dedicated time and place to work, patiently, on some things that felt really paralyzing. (It also taught me some useful concepts, like the idea of psychological safety and the Buddhist teaching of the “second arrow,” which I then snuck into some of my favorite writing I did this year. Win-win.) Nothing is fixed, obviously; therapy has felt mostly like a drawn-out emotional root canal all year, which is to say, I still nurse the same ache that sent me. But I’m grateful and I am learning and it’s starting to feel less self-indulgent to want to address my bullshit. I recommend therapy to everyone! If you’re interested in talking to someone, here are some affordable resources.

Iced Americanos 

There are precious few things that get M out of bed early: the promise of imminent skiing; a genuine emergency; and coffee. I’ve relied heavily on the third one this year to squeeze in a half-hour of quality time with him before I go to the office. Listen I know this is cheesy as h*ck but it truly improves the overall quality of my day! Anyway the iced coffee at our corner coffee shop is not for me but the baristas take great care with their espresso shots so I started getting iced americanos instead and now I have been converted to an iced americano grrrl, even in winter (true to my New England roots). And a morning-coffee-with-your-boyfriend grrrl. Gross! I can’t help it.

Creative collaboration

Madeline Zappala is both a dear friend of mine and a total badass artistic inspiration to me. I was so glad she asked me to help edit her magazine, Reflections on the Burden of Men – and that she (and her co-creator, Laura) accepted a short piece I wrote about being disgusted by sexuality, or maybe more so by the insistence that women perform it for patriarchy, feeling isolated from my body, wanting to not want what I want. Editing the writing in the magazine was a dream! And watching it come together was so instructive. Go get a copy! (Or just pick up some unsolicited dick pic stickers, a real thing they made.)

2017 was a pretty exciting year for Keeper, too. Between January and August – when Sam moved back to Texas and Keeper became a project with a less coherent identity – we played amazing shows and put out a tape and met a lot of really lovely people. I learned a lot.

Female solidarity

I never got the appeal of using the phrase “work wife” to describe a lady BFF in your office before this year (too close to “girl crush,” which, I maintain, is basically homophobic; plus, who wants to replicate the capitalist heteropatriarchy of the marriage-industrial complex in your office friendships, of all places?!) but now I have two and I totally get it. There’s really something special about working alongside women like me, and having them be people who are willing to take a lunch break or walk to Starbucks (lol) so we can encourage each other through weird career stuff, or vent about male incompetence, or gush about new music, or interrogate what it means to care about feminism or justice or epistemology or whatever in 2017, which is mostly what we did. Some of the most enriching and important conversations I had this year were these; we often joked about the positions of authority we’d have, the raises we’d get, the articles we’d be assigned if only the People In Charge heard the conversations we had around cafeteria lunch tables!

Of course, there was also the mere fact of having lived with three other women throughout this year, creating a home that was a constant space for frank discussions about shared oppression; there were days of 8+ hours of GChat sessions that formed a virtual safe space; there were the year’s albums that spoke to the bizarre, incredible realities of womanhood. And all of this happening in the context of women coming forward about sexual assault, women journalists reporting on it, all of us whispering #MeToo on the internet. It was a year that, for me, fostered a consistent and palpable sense of solidarity among us. I needed it.

The “Thief” music video:  

Lastly: this is, maybe, the most wonderfully terrible music video I have ever seen. I first heard about this on the now-defunct podcast This Week Had Me Like, which I sorely miss, and now it’s rare that my housemates and I go more than a month without watching it communally. It’s histrionic in the best way, nonsensical, totally delightful. Thank you, Ansel Elgort.

the beginning of my MS story

originally written on June 2, 2012

diagnosis: MS 

After the doctor said I might have MS I did some research on my own and concluded that I had about a 90% chance of having it. When I told this to people, they told me to be optimistic. I know, that’s what you’re supposed to say, but it annoyed me because I was presenting them with data and they were telling me I was wrong.

Well I wasn’t wrong and got told that twice last Thursday. Honestly, I took it like a champ. But I was also expecting it. This time I could listen to what the doctors were telling me. Instead of two lesions, they found five. This time they took time and showed me where they were. They didn’t discuss my blood work or my urine results, I guess there were were ok.

Throughout the day I was live reporting what was happening on twitter and Fubs. The guy that I was seeing, who from this moment on shall be known as The Worst Man In The World or TW for short, read my updates and even liked one of them. That was the last interaction we had as he disappeared after that. Yup, no check ins to see what’s going on with me or if I’m ok. Nothing at all. I mean, I knew he was a dick, but he took it to another level. But I digress.

When my mom left, I had a chance to breathe and got a little freaked. I also had plans to drink with my bff so we did that. I drank and shopped and that’s how I made it through the day. But the next day it all began to sink in. And that’s when I started eating and drinking my feelings away. My therapist would be so disappointed that I didn’t “sit with my feelings.” Fuck that. My feelings freak me out. And so that’s what I did all weekend.

My mom told my dad and I didn’t answer his call because I couldn’t handle talking to him. And then I went to work where my boss knows and the first thing she asked was how was the doctors. I got chocked up when I told. I surprised myself. And it got increasingly harder to tell people. So I did what I always do, wrote everyone an email and called it a day.

I started reading Multiple Sclerosis For Dummies. Let me tell you, this book stresses me the fuck out. They were not lying when they said ignorance is bliss. I do not want to spend two chapters reading about all the ways my body is going to fall the fuck apart and how there are few medicines that will help me. I don’t want to hear about how walking is overrated and what’s important is mobility and that I can decorate my cane so I can feel better about it. What in the entire fuck? Yeah the fact that my wheelchair is covered in hot pink glitter totally makes me feel better about not being able to walk. I get that they are trying to be optimistic. I understand that any mobility is a good thing. But I treasure everything my body can do. I treasure my independence. And I can’t handle that this disease has the potential to take everything from me.

I can go blind. I might not able to swallow. My speech can become slurred and people will think I’m drunk. I can have random pains all over my body. I can lose the ability to walk. I can have body tremors. I can lose my memory. It can become harder for me to learn. I can lose control of my emotions. I can become incontinent. I can have a host of sexual problems. I can become so fatigued that quitting my job will become a reasonable option. All of this can cause me to become a burden to my family and my friends. I can’t even think about dating anymore because I’m not sure what kind of shit show my life is going to be when I’m older.

I keep telling my friends I’m doing fine. I’ve been on a food and alcohol binge for almost a week now. I’ve lost my metro card (or more likely someone stole it while I was sleeping on the train). I’ve fallen asleep and rode the A train to both ends. I almost slept with the wrong guy. I’ve gained 5 pounds. I’m not sleeping well. I am a mess because I can’t figure out how to cope with this shit. And my friends encourage my bad behavior because it makes for good stories.

My coping mechanisms leave so much to be desired.  I’m trying to do better.

xoxo, e

post script: I’m a million times better than when I was when I wrote

i genuinely can’t remember a time in the last few years where i felt as lonely as i do now.. i don’t really know what happened but my life is utter shit at the moment and like, i’ve been pretending everything was a-okay and trying to convince myself it was all in my head but there comes a point where i have to realise that over the last four months or so everything’s turned to shit and i can’t explain why it’s happened it’s just happened, and literally the fucking icing on the cake was of all things me losing my snapstreak of 290 days with my bff who i have to admit to myself i’m barely friends with at this point, like there was a point maybe 6 months back where i could say with 100% certainty that she was my best friend and i was hers, and then it seemed iffy as the summer break ended, and then after we started back at uni we’ve just drifted apart i guess, by which i mean she has moved in with her uni friends and i have no uni friends and she prioritises them now. which like, is totally understandable this isn’t some whiny rant about how i’m not the most important thing in her life because like fuck, i’m glad she’s having fun with everyone in her house and it makes total sense that she’d have less time for me since we’re like half the country away.. doesn’t mean it isn’t kinda heartbreaking to go from talking every day to having half my messages ignored, but like, there’s no hard feelings there, i kind of expected this would happen eventually since our interests and hobbies and general lifestyles are so vastly different at this point that we don’t really have much to talk about and really keeping a snapstreak going was the only reason we really messaged everyday since i can’t relate to fixing cars, and motor racing, and veterinary stuff, and watching sports, and going out clubbing, and all the stuff our friendship was kinda founded on is now basically gone and while she might be the one friend i feel closest to of course that wouldn’t be the same for her and i can already tell that without he having snapchat the odds of us staying in touch for another year are really slim to none as much as i wish they weren’t. and it’s weird that the summer of last year was spent with us hanging out all the time, but this past summer was not, but was instead a summer crammed full of playing d&d, and yet all the people i was playing that with i’ve also drifted apart from. and i really feel like this reeks of self-pity but like, allow me that okay because what this all boils down to is that last year me and my friends all started uni/college, and everyone made new friends except me, and for the first year we were all still close because we all knew each other way better than the new uni friends, except that’s now no longer the case, and one friend now doesn’t seem to like me (long story short i was very very drunk and i jokingly insulted his girlfriend but it was not a good joke and i came across as being really rude, and despite my every effort to make up for it she hates me and so i barely see him any more), and another idek about, it just seems like yes we’re friends, but he has waaay more people he’d rather spend time with (including his girlfriend (who actually does like me so far as i’m aware and who i think is fab)), and we only really hang out for d&d which is super rare now because everyone has busy uni schedules and some have moved out so we’re not all within a short walk of each other any more, and also they have like proper social lives, and so yeah i barely see them or talk to them and i’m only in uni three days a week and so my week is basically sat-tuesday: at home, doing nothing all day drinking alone at night, then wed-fri: going to uni, sitting alone in lectures, skipping seminars, then coming home and getting drunk alone again, and repeat. at least i used to be able to pretend that the odd snap to keep up the streak was socialising, but now there are definitely going to be whole days that go by without my talking to anyone that isn’t a family member, and to top it all off my anxiety is just godawful right now and so the likelihood of me actual befriending anyone on my course beyond making a little small talk with the people i’m kinda friendly with is next to none. and also i’m a little worried i might be relying too heavily on alcohol to feel happy because i’m making £500 a month from etsy but my bank balance stays the same because i’m spending at least £30 a week on booze if not more, drinking literally every day without fail, and spend the whole day up until i start drinking thinking “at least i won’t feel quite so shit once i start drinking”. and i am 100% going to go downstairs and have some vodka after i finish writing this because it’s the only way i’ll be able to stop myself from bursting into tears sometime within the next hour or so. and as a side effect of the regular drinking (along with plenty of comfort eating) i’ve gained a stone and a half lately and so feel like absolute shit about my body too. and i really think i should see a therapist, because my anxiety and the self-medicating with alcohol, and what is probably depression, and just generally feeling like i’m coasting through on alcohol and bottling up feelings, and also because like, i just need someone to talk to, even if that’s someone i’m paying to listen to my problems and pretend they care because i don’t know how i’m going to go on if i have to keep being so miserable and never being able to talk to anyone about it

This is going to be a long text, so you might quit if you want.So, I have this friend I really like, we're both girls. Last year, I told her my feelings and she said she didn't like me in the same way. Ok, that's life. But, after that, we got closer. I mean, we were really close, like bffs. But, still, no is no.Anyway, she was going through a really bad time of her life and she needed a lot of help. She was also feeling really lonely. I helped the way I could, we would go out together (mostly, some other friends were there too), she would sometimes come talk to me when she was felling down or needed some advice ans I started to feel comfortable doing the same with her, none of us is usually open about private life problems.But, you know, we started getting really close and I started to feel a bit confused, sometimes I would think she was maybe starting to like me and sometimes I would think "no, that's not happening". But, since she was really down, I decided not to bring this subject at that time and just give it some time. I also was afraid to bring this subject up, it has been only 4-5 months since she rejected me, I thought I would rush things (if there was anything going on).She would frequently come to my house, sometimes invited me to her house, we chatted a lot via Whatsapp and we had a lot of fun together. We saw each other every week and chatted almost every day. Sometimes, it would even feel like we were dating, but I knew we were not.One day, we hang out in a group and some other friend asked me if anything was going on between me and her because we looked like a couple, this friend said she was acting like my girlfriend. Then, I realized I was not just me who thought we were getting too close.After that, vacations came (I'm in college) and she went back to her hometown. I felt she started to act a bit strange. I would go chat with her, but it didn't feel the same, she would just give me a short reply and the conversation was dead. I started to wonder if she was mad at me or anything and she said she wasn't. I had thought we would keep talking and stuff during vacations, even if she was away. I was also feeling down because of big problems with my family, which I needed to get it off my chest. I tried to talk with her about it, because I could trust her, and I felt her reply was really cold (it was something like "I understand" and period). I felt worse and disappointed after that.Then, she came to my city again because it was a common friend's birthday. It was a sleepover. She didn't left my side during the whole party, I was even a bit annoyed. Then, she went back to her city and no chats or anything again. I started to feel she was playing with me, but I was also worried she could be mad at anything I might have done. She came again to my city during vacations, but didn't tell anyone (she told me after she got back). I was a bit hurt by that. I know she can do whatever she wants, but I felt really bad. If I went to any city a friend lives in, I would at least tell them I was there, even if it would be hard or impossible to meet them and it had been around a month we hadn't had contact. I told her that if she had told me, we could have seen each other and she replied "There wouldn't be enough time. You were all at that birthday party I wasn't invited to". She had brought a friend with her when she came a day before the party (she has a house here). In my opinion, it would be easy for her to hang out with us the day before and/or stay one more day to see us but I decided to let her be, it's her life and her decisions, I should have nothing to do with that. Still, it bothered me.I decided to bring this up with her and asked if there was anything wrong. I said I thought we would talk and hang out more during vacations and mentioned the time she came here and didn't tell anyone. I also said that I wasn't trying to tell her what to do with her life and I didn't want to her to get mad, but I was feeling everything was strange. She said she thought her friend wouldn't be comfortable with us because she was shy. I was really fine with that.Classes started again. We hang out again, but I still felt she was a bit distant but ok. But then, she started avoiding me, like, she wasn't even making eye contact or talking with me (she would talk with everyone else in our group). One day, I asked if there was something wrong and she said she was upset with something I had said some other day. I apologized and she also said she was bothered by the way I've been acting. She said I sent her that message during vacations, "accusing" her of being distant and that I was jealous because she came here with a friend (which is totally not true). She said she was thinking about going out with me but when she read that she just "got angry and went away". I said I wasn't accusing her of anything neither jealous of her friend. I said I was feeling she was strange during the whole vacations and I wanted to know if anything had happened. I asked why she didn't told me that before and she said that she wanted me to "take my own conclusions" and that she hated to have "this kind" of conversation.After that, it only got worse and worse. She was avoiding me, giving me silent treatment and stuff and I didn't know what had I done, I asked her to tell if there was something wrong or else I wouldn't know. But, there were also moments she was nice. It was like hot and cold (and really painful to me). She has psychiatric problems and she frequently passes out during the academic semester because of that, so sometimes I would ask how she was, specially during exams, because I truly worried.One day, we talked about it. During the conversation, she said she didn't know what I was expecting of her, specially when I asked about her exams. I honestly didn't understand that because I have never asked her anything special, just "hey, how are you doing?" or "how was your exam?". She said she was focusing on her studies and she was a bit away from everybody and also she needed some space. I was ok with that, even though I clearly felt she wasn't treating any other of our friend as bad as she was treating me. She also said she thought I was confusing our relationship, which I totally disagree. I've never treated her as if she was my girlfriend. I knew we weren't dating. My therapist and another close friend agree with me (they have basically all the details of my side of th story). They both think that actually, she's been the one treating me as her girlfriend. I don't know if I agree.We would still see each other every week because we would have lunch at college together (her, me and all of our friends), but I didn't try to talk to her or anything to give her some space. Then, she got a bit closer. I thought it would be safe to go a bit closer too, but every time I did, she seemed to back off. And it would go on like that, when I "ignored" her, she started to seem closer but then she would back off and silent treatment. At first, I missed her a lot and wanted our friendship back the way it was before all of that, but she would always be cold and stuff. Later, I started to get really annoyed of how it was all looking that hot-and-cold game.We talked about it again. I said I couldn't stand this kind of situation, I told her she gives me silent treatment for no apparent reason even if I had told her it hurts me, as if she expected me to know beforehand what would upset her. She said she wasn't expecting me to know anything beforehand, but it was a matter of "common sense", she explained that she thinks I don't mind my words very well (she said that because once I said I felt she was treating me like trash when she gave me silent treatment) and that she thought it was arrogant of me to ask about her exams when I keep saying my mean score was high (I said that ONCE and because someone asked me, also, that was never my point when I asked about her exams) and she also said she was "preserving" me from telling she felt degrading to be near me.Then I decided to avoid her. I went to do my own stuff and go out with other people. Still, this situation annoys me. We didn't end our friendship but we are not exactly friends. We're something in between, sometimes we go along like friends, sometimes it seems we'll never be friends again. That bothers me. I want an end.We still see each other sometimes, but I stopped having lunch with those friends and stuff and she also, usually, doesn't go when our group hangs out together. We spend a lot of time without contact. When we meet, she's usually really friendly, as if she was still my bff, but, after, she backs off again. I wish I was a bit stronger, but I admit sometimes I miss her and I'm still struggling to go completely no contact, because, even so, I still like her. I try very hard not to think about it, but I do feel sometimes it was all my fault. I sometimes think I should had had asked her out again before all of this started, and that she felt I was letting it linger and I lost the chance. Sometimes, I think she'd never liked me at all and is just playing games. Sometimes I think I should have given her more space and should have realized things before she complaint, even if this rationally doesn't make any sense. My friend and therapist both think she probably started liking me but got scared of intimacy. I'm not sure but I would like to believe that.I rationally believe I haven't done anything THAT wrong (of course I made some mistakes because I'm not perfect), but I do feel guilty a lot of times. I think she's immature and communicates poorly. Even so, I would like to hang out with her again, we had a great friendship and I honestly think we would make a good couple (if she's interested, of course). Can we still be friends? Did I screw this up? Does she like me back and is afraid? What should I do?PS: Is it possible to change the post name?? I typed "chance" wrong. via /r/dating_advice