Finding and Telling the Truth

Names have been changed. 

Anna and I have been friends our whole lives: Our parents met in a neighborhood playgroup when we were 2. She and I biked around the schoolyard, went to the natural history museum, and talked about Percy Jackson together. She often asked me to sleep over, and I generally said yes, even if I had to endure her loud chatter over the movie we watched. 

In 8th grade, we had almost every class together and spent every afternoon on her couch, dissecting our other relationships. Anna insisted I was too much of a people-pleaser with our other friends: “You need to learn to say no!”

Boys in our grade kept asking if we were dating, and we decided we needed an answer. We’d each encountered the label “queerplatonic” online, describing a relationship somewhere between romantic and platonic. It seemed to fit: We didn’t kiss each other but we were passionately attached. (“Codependent” was Anna’s mom’s word.)

In 9th grade, I spent less time with Anna. I joined new clubs, including Jazz/Rock Band, and developed a crush on a drummer named Mason. 

That spring, every day revolved around Mason. My heart would pound when I heard him clacking his drumsticks outside the classroom where Jazz/Rock Band met. He’d learned the drums in less than a year, and I admired that. He seemed so happy, and he had so many friends.  He was a year older and knew how to do everything I didn’t. I loved the way he dressed. I glowed when he smiled at me or talked to me.

I wrote about our interactions at the end of every day: “We played chess against each other today… I’m praying I have a chance with him. Ugh, I know I’m being so delusional! I’m still planning on asking him to sing a duet with me, but I haven’t found the perfect song yet.”

Between February and June, I wrote a total of 60,000 words about Mason. I didn’t speak a word of it out loud to anyone. At the beginning of June, I started to spend more time with Anna again and told her about my crush.

We processed the crush together, and she coached me into asking Mason out at the end of June. But when I did, and he said yes, Anna cried, “I feel like things are changing.” Early that summer, Mason became my boyfriend, but when Anna and I went to our usual camp in Vermont we once again became each other’s main person. We laughed about how repressed we were in 8th grade and agreed that our feelings for each other probably were romantic back then. Then I went back to talking about Mason.

Queerplatonic?

During the fall of 10th grade, Mason and I fell in love and wanted to spend all our time together. Anna asked me to hang out after school one day, and, as usual, I chattered about Mason’s wonderfulness.  

“I think you should know I’m still in love with you,” Anna said suddenly.

“This whole time?” I asked her. “But you were so proud of me for getting together with him.”

I felt a lot of pressure. I assumed that since we hadn’t talked about ourselves as a couple since 8th grade that we were now just best friends. 

“I’m not gonna ask you to break up with Mason. I know you love him, but I needed to tell you that.” Anna didn’t quite make eye contact.

“What should I tell him?” I asked.

“Well…” she trailed off. “Explain that we’re queerplatonic and that you’re not leaving him. He already knows we’re really close, right?”

“Yeah, I think he’s been able to pick up on it,” I laughed. 

Anna breathed. “Do you think you still like me at all?”

I hesitated. We were closer than friends, and though I was scared of letting her down, it was clearly Mason whom I had romantic feelings for. “It’s still queerplatonic for me. The lines are blurry, but I’m not going to start dating you, obviously.”

“Yeah. Obviously.” Anna didn’t smile.

The night before Halloween, I told Mason about the conversation with Anna. I sent him a website defining queerplatonic relationships, and said, “This is what’s going on between me and Anna. It’s not romantic but we’re closer than best friends.”

Mason thanked me for telling him, then asked, “Is anything going to change? You liked her before but that just… went away?”

“Nothing’s changing at all; you’re the one I’m dating. It’s staying that way,” I told him. “Promise.”

Mason had told me that his previous relationships had made him feel terrible about himself. I was flattered he trusted me enough to describe his past trauma, yet the pressure to avoid hurting him increased. I had been wary of telling him about Anna’s declaration of love for fear it would make him insecure. 

I also felt responsible for Anna’s feelings, so whoever got to me first had dibs on my free time. Spending time with each of them fulfilled but also exhausted me. I routinely got home after 7 p.m. and had to do homework late into the night.

I had promised them that both relationships could coexist, so I felt my job was to make them both feel important. On one side was my longest friendship and on the other was my first love. 

Setting Boundaries

One time that winter, I didn’t answer Anna’s texts for two days, and she wrote, “I think if I called you and I was about to kill myself, you wouldn’t pick up if you were with him.” I stared at the message in shock. I knew she wasn’t suicidal, but this was the furthest she’d ever gone.

The next time I saw him was a cold day, and we huddled together on a bench in Central Park. He said, “You can leave me,” as he hunched in on himself miserably. “I know she’s important to you, and I don’t have to be. I get it. I’d forgive you.” He looked drawn and a little desperate.

I felt my job was to make them both feel important. On one side was my longest friendship and on the other was my first love.

I wrapped my arms around his shoulders. “I don’t want that. I am never leaving you and I especially won’t leave you for Anna.” 

I meant it, but it took another four months to act on my realization that I wanted more Mason, less Anna in my life. Anna undercut Mason more and more: “Don’t you wish he’d taken you to dinner for Valentine’s Day?” “Why are you doing this for a boy who didn’t even go to your grandpa’s funeral?” Then, in April, “I can’t stand seeing you sacrifice so much for a guy who can’t get you a proper promise ring.” 

Every time, I’d type an enraged response and delete it. But finally, in April, I pushed send on a barrage of messages finally voicing what I felt: “I’m sorry it offends you that he’s a teenage boy! I want to scream. It isn’t f-cking OK with me that you criticize every single thing he does. The things you’ve said over the last few months make me feel incredibly guilty and also like I want to murder someone. I can’t keep pretending everything’s OK.”

“I’ve been trying to get you to say that,” she responded. “Things with us haven’t been normal since before you started dating him.”

It took me a while to digest the outrageousness of that. I had held back words ever since Anna told me she was still in love with me, while she’d been pushing me to explode in anger. I was putting my entire being into preserving a friendship she was trying to wreck. She had been waiting for my patience to run out, and it did. 

We stopped talking for two months.

The Threshold of Honesty

Despite some guilt, I felt lighter and happier. I gave Mason all my time, which I’d wanted to do from the beginning, and I had no one’s expectations to fill anymore. As the school year ended, everything was freer. Mason was in a better mood, too; the weight had been lifted from both of us.

In the self-sacrificing haze of the last eight months, it didn’t feel like an option to refuse Anna’s demands. Giving her all of my free time added a layer of duty to my other relationships and distorted my idea of what is expected of friends. 

After finally telling Anna “No,” I reframed spending time with other people from something I owed them to something I had the choice to do. Turning down a social invitation wasn’t a total betrayal. I am much better at making plans now, because it no longer feels like my life hangs in the balance. My friends can tell. They are happy to see me, but I can decline without stress or guilt.  

I’m a junior now, and Mason and I still spend most of our time in each other’s company. We talk and laugh and cry. We trade off the roles of comforter and comforted easily, we pick up on each other’s feelings, and we tell the truth. He doesn’t take advantage of my empathy the way Anna did. He understands that he is one of the most important people in the world to me, and he doesn’t make me prove it over and over.

Anna and I made peace but kept the distance. We acknowledged that we both grew over the last year, and she has agreed that trying to be close again would magnify her unhealthy attachment to me. I am less forgiving and less tolerant when she acts out. I see her as someone who struggles with mental health, and that’s not my responsibility to fix.

The few conversations Anna and I have now are about boundaries. I can tell she has grown too, and realized things about herself that she wouldn’t have if I’d stayed silent. Speaking up was what she forced me to do, yet we are both better for it.

Sophomore year was the worst and best year of my life. I now navigate the world with more confidence, knowing the effect my words can have. I worried for so long that expressing my feelings would destroy a relationship I needed to maintain, but my honesty gave me the freedom I had been longing for.