When I was 13, I met Katie. She was a completely hopeless nerdy mess, the only girl in a family of Mormons, babied and petted and called Princess.
I was the daughter of a single mother with a younger brother, lost and rebellious and risk-taking. My father was absentee. Still is.
Katie's family lived in a nicer neighborhood. We lived in a smaller one. She was brick, I was wood siding.
We became fast friends, despite our differences, and we would spend weekends at her house, sneaking in my Guns N' Roses tapes and sneaking out the back door to visit other kids and sometimes our boyfriends in the park close by.
Most of my young life was spent with this person. We had nicknames, we cried when Kurt Cobain died, we told each other everything.
If we fast-forwarded the memories to where we could only see the actions, not the words, as they passed by over those 14 years of friendship, we would notice two things happening.
1. Amanda was not picking the best men, but was a motivated student and a fearless adventurer. her family life only enhanced that.
2. Katie was waiting to be saved by Prince Charming. She was the damsel in distress, perpetually, and her family life only enhanced that.
And as I sit here, 31 years old, with my dog, in another new town, in another eccentric and charming apartment, with another boyfriend a phone call away, focused on my schoolwork and worrying about my personal future, she is married.
She married a man when we were 27. She had dated a few men, all of whom she would have married had they only asked. Catholic, Catholic, Muslim.
The Muslim Egyptian older divorced-with-two-kids man from our office won her heart, likely due in no small part to our hour-long Q&A sessions where he learned all there was to know of her. How to best make her happy, what she wanted from life, who she was. He was so sly. I thought we were friends. And on he went, wooing and sweeping her away.
And the Muslim man won. And Katie converted to Islam. I did my duty as a friend and took her to coffee to make sure this was what she wanted. She said it was.
I went to her wedding with my parents, but wasn't allowed in because I am not Muslim. I celebrated her marriage at the reception, as I knew I always would. But she seemed to drift away over the following weeks.
I pursued her with the innocence that only true youthful friendships can have--I could not fathom a life where Katie and I weren't friends. Best friends. Why would we not be? I thought she was just newly married, and was letting her get acclimated to her new life.
And inside of a year of the beginning of their relationship, we were no longer friends. I never knew what hit me.
I received a letter two years after she left me, so to speak, outlining why she had basically divorced me as her person.
I was a bad influence on children, I had hit on her husband, I had always been envious of her, I was someone who wanted to take everyone's boyfriends.
The assault was so painful, so violating. She took me, twisted and ruined me, and threw that offensive mess back at me as though it were real. And I assure you, it was not. I have made my mistakes, but not those.
I read, I re-read. And shared it with my other closest friends. I pondered and wondered and looked inward. I questioned myself to the core.
After all, if my closest friend would say those things, they must have some truth, some validity. Right?
Days turned weeks, and soon seasons had passed and I waited to find the words to say.
I never justified her with a response. I knew those views weren't hers, because they only came out after she married that man. That man who had used me to win her heart, and then kicked me out for not being a safe, married woman, maybe for not being Muslim. For being the one who had been there for her all those years--there was no room for me in his world.
Strangely, another dear friend came on at that same company, where we all worked, where they met, where I shortly after their marriage had left. Katie would greet my friend, whom she knew through me from college, as though they didn't both know me, as though my friend didn't know how deeply hurt I was. We would discuss it with utter disbelief at her callousness.
She is still married. I check in on her by Google sometimes, I search her name. I wonder about her. She is my long-lost love, in a way.
I truly think that her betrayal, her unkindness and abandonment of our long-nutured friendship, has changed me.
I never thought I would not know what was going on in her life, who she had become, but here I am, writing about her, four years later.
You never know what can happen in a deeply entwined relationship. And I still don't know if I wish her well.
