I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This [But I'm Going to Anyway]

by Chelsea Devantez

I’d been called an old soul enough times to understand that this was just a cute way for adults to say that you’d had to grow up too fast.

My friends and family urged me not to look back, but I wasn’t, I was looking beside me, at the empty space where Rebecca would be standing.

When a friendship breaks up, there’s nothing to blame, it’s just because someone in the purest form is deciding: no thank you, not you.

And yet, as soon as she was gone, things actually got way better. Well, first it got way worse, but later it got better! When I no longer had the option to pour all my energy into Rebecca, a giant space opened up in my life—one that began to quickly fill up with incredible, healthier female friendships that I’d previously relegated to secondary roles.

We both became better, happier people without each other, but that doesn’t ease even one millisecond of the pain I feel when I think about her. There will always be a piece of me missing, an empty spot with a place card for her. There are thoughts I have and things I see that would only make sense to tell Rebecca, but there’s no Rebecca in my life anymore.

When I tell this story, I still feel a little betrayed. But I know if Rebecca told it, she would have a version where you’re rooting for both of us to find our freedom, where you’re left in awe of her courage to walk away from something that really was bad for each of us.

If you’ve had something horrifying happen to you, you know quite well that telling people often just makes it feel worse.

The only thing I wanted was a passably average relationship to prove to myself that I was a “normal” girl.

Tina had run across a four-lane highway without a penny on her to get to freedom. If she could be brave with the whole world watching her, in a generation that hadn’t even opened its eyes to abuse, sexism, and racism, then what the hell was I waiting for?

To be honest, I didn’t even realize I was sharing common spaces with cults my whole childhood until way later, which is an ideal quality for someone you want in your cult.

I had somehow developed an elaborate system to almost always keep me outside of my own mind. In fact, before you tell someone they are so strong or so brave, you should probably first check to see if they are just routinely sending their brain to the moon.

I used to think that in order to truly live the good life, I’d need access to experts in marble buildings with expensive hourly fees to tell me what to do. But I now know, after gaining access to some of those marble buildings, that those places are filled with everyday losers just like us, their Chanel bags don’t mean shit, and there is no one more powerful, wise, and impactful than a team of best friends in your phone.

Historically, I had looked for friendships I could hide inside when I’ve been too scared to try and live life on my own.

In their quest to “like all women equally” rather than fix these financial and political inequities, we erase all of our differences, and for what? So that we could give every single woman on earth a T-shirt that says YES, QUEEN. It’s an odd phrase to monetize for a movement, because not all of us are queens. I know a couple of “queens” who are straight rotten! I will still fight for their right to equal pay, but they are rotten.

I know many a woman who thinks that because she wants herself to succeed, and she is a woman, she is therefore a feminist, when really she cares nothing about the respect and rights of us all, and in fact even benefits from the inequality so she can be the only woman at the boys’ club and get more attention, which in her eyes is feminism!

Every time we hit a high and a low, Ashley had taught me that boundaries, space, and respect in a relationship must be your lifejacket so that, should it be necessary, you can reach out and save your drowning friend without sinking yourself.

The decision to be married was quite easy because one day I looked up and I already was.