What the Hell, Bryan?

In anticipation of next month's trip to Provo, I have been reading old journal entries. There are so many things that I remembered, that I expected, and that I was even looking for. That was what this blog was going to be about. Instead, I found some things I hadn't remembered, dots I hadn't ever connected before, some things that surprised me from my own journal. Last night's reading blew my mind, and I am reeling. 

So, this is where I will start. Ostensibly, the story is about Bryan, but truly it is about my insecurities in relationships and how I run when I get scared. 

Sophomore year, I wrote page after detailed page of my friendship with Bryan (and others, but this is the relevant one). Mundane things that I remember with deep fondness. Homework parties at his apartment. Grocery runs in his Honda, listening to Billy Joel. Late-night movies. Shakes at the Malt Shoppe. Pie at Village Inn. All these I picture with a golden aura haloing our group of very good friends.

I also had a deep and personal one-on-one friendship with Bryan. He made me trust him, treating me gently, like the feral animal I was. He was patient and persistent, and he won me over, heart and soul. I loved him like I loved Matt and Ted, April, Tarythe, and Jocilyn. The one difference is that I was also in love with Bryan. Like, like liked him, to use the common vernacular. He treated me like a princess, was always kind and charming. Plus, he was cute in a preppy pretty boy way. A golden doodle puppy.

I did not treat him like a crush. If anything, I tried to banish those feelings. For one thing, April loved him, too, and, I loved April. Secondly, Bryan and I were friends. Maybe some people would read that and think, "just friends." But there was no "just" about it in my mind. I was starved for friendship, for the true, deep, meaningful friendship, and Bryan offered me a feast. 

April, to whom love and friendship came easily, did not understand.

April wanted more alone time with Bryan, and as her friend, by girl code, I was expected to give it. But as Bryan's friend, I needed to know if he wanted more alone time. Was I was in the way, an unwanted third wheel, a charity case? That would have been the end of my time with him. I did not tell him of my feelings or April's. I merely asked about his own. He shared in confidence that he had no romantic interest in her, and called me one of his best friends. He charmingly forbade me from ditching him.

April, alas, overheard her name and wanted me to tell her everything about the conversation. I refused. Bryan's feelings for her were shared in confidence; his friendship for me felt precious; and, plus, she was being mean about it. I didn't realize that not sharing would break her heart and lead her to question my motives over and over in regard to Bryan.  

While April and I grew apart, Bryan became one of my very best friends.

He would literally give me pennies for my thoughts, and I shared everything with him. He also shared with me. Once, when he came to meet me at work, he told my coworkers, "she's my best friend in the whole world." I knew he was exaggerating, of course, but he also told me in sincerity that he trusted me. Which was good, because I practically forced him to open up to me. If I was going to share, then he was, too, dammit. 

Tarythe, envious, said, "He doesn't tell anyone anything, and he tells you everything." I didn't think that was true, but, I mean, did they even ask him? Maybe they needed pennies, like the ones he and I passed between us.

He and I spent a lot of time together, hours sometimes, and often one-on-one. We'd do homework or run errands or go out to eat. If I didn't see him, we'd talk on the phone. Sometimes our conversation was trivial and sometimes we'd tell each other about our families or our romantic lives. He pestered me about Jon, and I did likewise about about Natalie. 

Michael, my therapist, loved Bryan. He often assigned me homework regarding my friends: ask for a ride, share a difficult memory, tell someone you're mad. He'd ask me to pick someone I trusted, and I often picked Bryan. Bryan always reacted the way Michael predicted: with warmth, compassion, and love. 

I could cry in front of Bryan. When my mom and I had a fight over Christmas break, I emailed him. When I went skiing my first and only time, Bryan remained by my side as long as I'd let him, patiently teaching me, while the others skied ahead. I don't think he knew how much that meant to me. When family threatened drama, Bryan was there. When there was friendship drama, Bryan was there. When I struggled with school, Bryan was there.

We shared our dreams, both nocturnal and waking. After I shared the one about the apple tree, he reassured me of his continued friendship. "I'd come visit you even if you were soaking wet." That's the first time I told him I loved him. We began to say it routinely. He once even told me "Of course I 'as you wish' you, silly." 

There were times where I'd get mad at him and he'd get mad at me. I could always confront him with a "what the hell, Bryan," and somehow we'd work it out and then hug it out. 

Because, Bryan was a hugger. Like Tarythe, April, Ted, Jon, and Elise. We all hugged each other hello and goodbye every time we saw each other. We all cuddled when we watched movies or meteors, fireworks or clouds. We had pillow fights and wrestling matches. We went to playgrounds and played sports. Touch was common and uncomplicated among us, a completely new and wonderful concept to me.

Bryan held me when I cried. He laid his head on me while I read books aloud. We took naps together in the living room, even once touching hands while we did so. I soaked it in and did my very best to keep the swooning to myself. I never assumed he meant anything by it, even though it angered and hurt April. I had to defend myself again and again. There is nothing going on between me and Bryan. 

But, was there? Something began to happen that I did not remember. Bryan's hugs began to get longer. He would hold me and smell my hair and nuzzle my neck. Nineteen-year-old Audrey was suddenly very confused. It threw my mind into absolute tumult. I wrote in my journal that he only hugged me like that when April wasn't around. But others noticed. Tarythe asked me if I was in love with Bryan. Jocilyn asked the reverse. And Bryan himself told me on the phone that Jon would watch him like a hawk. I tried so hard to trust his friendship, but my mind kept asking, What the hell, Bryan?

I wonder now, as a more mature and world-wise reader, if he was hugging April like that during my absences. She certainly had been giddy since she'd confessed her feelings for him. I found out months later that they would make out sometimes in his car, strictly secret and completely noncommittal. April didn't confide this to me until after he moved, so I never got the chance to give him the smack on the head he deserved for playing with her like that. Now I wonder if their NCMO was already going on, if he was a bigger player than I gave him credit for. 

Or maybe his hugs reflected sincere feelings? I honestly do not know, and I didn't then either. I always thought he saw me as the tag-along kid sister type, the safe girl, the sand to his ostrich as it were. He told me he was fond of me, but that he was fond of a lot of people. He told me that I was beautiful, but he gave compliments to everyone, all the time. In the confusion caused by those hugs, I began to wonder if he felt some attraction back. 

I wish I could reach into his mind then or now and find out what he was thinking. I mean, what the hell, Bryan? But there are some things you cannot ask twenty years later, one married friend to another. 

Then Michael gave me my next assignment: to tell Bryan how I felt about him. Not the friendship part, the important part. He meant the attraction part; how I like liked him, in addition to loving him; how I wanted him to hold and nuzzle and smell me.  

I put it off for two weeks.

Some parts of the ensuing drama I remembered accurately. Others, not so much. The awkwardness, though, is ingrained in my soul, how utterly excruciatingly uncomfortable I was while confessing my crush on him. I had recalled that Bryan didn't return my feelings and that nothing ever happened between us. But something did happen. 

I lamented in my journal that it came out all wrong, that I didn't explain properly why I was saying it or what I wanted. I was terrified of abandonment. That's why Michael challenged me to ask for help and express difficult feelings: to show me that my friends don't view me as an inconvenience, that they won't leave if I make a mistake or a demand. That I could take up space and still be loved. That's why I told Bryan, so I wouldn't be afraid anymore of that secret ruining our friendship. I never expected him to reciprocate. I just needed to open up to him and have it be okay.

And he said it was. It probably wasn't even a surprise. Everyone had a crush on him. Seriously. He promised me that it wouldn't change anything between us. But, then, he didn't drop by to see me at work the next day like usual. It was one mistake in his perfect record as best friend, but I was utterly heartbroken. 

There was probably a really good reason, but at the time, I viewed it as the end of our friendship. He had lied. He'd said everything would be the same, but then he didn't come. I'd pushed too far, said too much, and overstepped the bounds of his affection for me. I had lost my very best friend. For days, I cried in the shower.

I cried again reading the journal entry, so sad for my younger self who had loved so fiercely and thought she deserved so little.

I put up walls, fast and hard, and didn't even know that I had done so. Today, I wish so badly that I had asked him why he hadn't met me at work--such a little thing--maybe even confronted him. What the hell, Bryan? You said nothing would change. But I didn't. 

Instead, I emailed Kevin after months of silence. That's part I definitely didn't remember. Reading my journals, I couldn't believe myself. I emailed Kevin the next day after my failed confession. The. Next. Day. Reeling from the perceived rejection--not the romantic one but the one of friendship--I ran back to the boy I'd dumped twice. 

Reading this in my journal, I marveled aloud, "What the hell, Audrey!?" I couldn't believe what I had done, how foolish, how desperate. At the time, I thought I had lost my best friend because of my confession, but if I lost him, I lost him because I ran away, to be the one to leave for fear of getting left. 

Clearly, I needed more therapy.

I made things right with April, and Bryan began bringing his brother Aaron (on whom I later developed a crush) to all of our group things. And it was group things after that. I have no further record of days spent one-on-one with Bryan. I wonder now if he brought Aaron to diffuse the focus on him or to prevent misinterpreted intimacy. Or maybe it was because I began dating Kevin, but I had been dating Jon before and still had time with Bryan. 

Don't get me wrong. Bryan and I were still friends, but it wasn't the same. I had withdrawn. 

Still, weeks later, when Kevin and Jon were duking it out over dating me, in my journal I wished for Bryan. He used to tease me about boys, asking where each fell on the scale of my affections, comparing them to each other. What he didn't know is that I would have chosen him all along, even then.

When I failed a class and, later that same day, royally screwed up my finances, I felt too ashamed to tell Kevin, by then my boyfriend. A note in my journal says, what if I had gone to Bryan? He was, after all, the one person I had learned to ask for help, and he had made me promise him that I would always do so. 

Kevin and I dated for a month, until the last day of the semester, Bryan's very last day of college. Our group of friends had spent the night at a bookstore, reading children's stories to each other. It was one of those golden-aura nights of nostalgia. Then Kevin came over, asked me to go for a walk, and dumped me. As it was after midnight, I took my pain to my roommates, not to Bryan. 

I went from dating Kevin to dating Jon, and Ted was the one there for me who took up the mantle of protector-friend-at-arms. When Bryan moved, we began calling and emailing. I emailed him when Ted moved, when my mom sold my childhood home, when Kevin resurfaced in my life. I asked him about Natalie and then Wendy. We drifted apart gradually over time, staying Facebook friends and sending periodic updates. I still consider him a Friend. I wish he were coming to the reunion.

I always wished that I had never said anything to him, that we could have kept on like we had been. Now, I wonder what would have happened if I had trusted Bryan enough to stick it out despite my very real feelings of rejection. I mourn for myself the loss and loneliness I experienced and the reinforcement it gave to some very damaging beliefs I had about myself. Bryan was a good friend, my best friend, and I wish I had just continued to love him instead of letting myself like like him.