Unrequited Love Series: Best Friends

Hello everyone and welcome back to Lolly Secrets! I gave you a little teaser into this series earlier in the week on my Instagram, and for those of you who know…. you know that it’s not an easy one to talk about. This post is revealing a secret that has a special place in my heart - not necessarily the way you think.

I've been thinking about it and I've realised that, over time, I have felt some type of way about the feelings of unrequited love that seem to have settled into a pattern in my life. I feel this is especially significant in friendships, Particularly best friends.

Some of you might say “how can you have unrequited love with a best friend?” or “how can you feel like it's unrequited love when it is something to do with a friend or best friend and not a romantic relationship?”.

Well…!!! What I can tell you for a fact is that there IS such a thing as unrequited love between friends or between best friends. And I can say this because ...I’ve experienced this. Trust me!...it’s no fun.

YES! I do know what a best friend is...I’ve had a few over the years. Not because I lack a depth of loyalty but because the person who had the position of best friend unfortunately just wasn’t deserving of it, for different reasons.

Now for me to explain why, I'll have to take you back...all the way back to when I was in high school. My high school years were spent in an all girls high school which was one of the most prestigious schools in the city at the time.

The Beginning

In school, you had the day girls who went to school in the morning and got picked up or taken home after school and then you have the boarders who lived on the school grounds and most of the time were there all week, every week.

So you had your cool “cliques” that were day girls, you had your cool cliques that were boarders and then you had some that transcended those two cliques. So basically you had three cool cliques, with the Transcendent Clique being above the others.

I know!! It’s a lot to process…!!! Now you see this cooler clique was a mix of boarders and day girls who tended to set the trends for all their classmates. So I found myself in one of the cooler clique in school, boarder cool clique, and quickly elevated to the Transcendent cool clique.

The main reason for this, in hindsight, is because I became friends with one of the day girls in this Transcendent Clique. This brings me to my first unrequited love of a best friend.

Let’s call her Heather. Heather was a day girl but also in the Transcendent Clique. I remember the year Heather and I became friends. We would chit chat, hang around similar people and were friendly but she always saved a seat for a girl who would always come 5 minutes late. Let’s call the girl Daphnie.

Towards the end of that year, Daphne found out that her family was moving to a country far, far away and Heather was devastated. Cards were signed, tearful hugs were exchanged and promises of writing one another were sealed with friendship necklaces. Off went Daphne and the seat beside Heather became empty.

At this stage we talked so often that she or I would have to crane our necks to talk to the other. Soon enough Heather asks me “Hey Lolly, why don’t you sit beside me so it’s easier for us to talk?”. We became fast friends after that as we found ourselves in a lot of similar classes and sat together all the time hatching new ways to make our teachers’ lives hell.

YES! I was a hellion! And I wouldn’t take it back for anything! Heather was friendly, fun, always laughing, was one of the “troublesome” girls in class but always got good grades so she always got away with murder!!! I felt I had found someone who was exactly like me in so many ways! I had found my best friend!

Best Friends Finally!!!...or...Were we...?

Fast forward to final year in high school. We applied for colleges, we had done our mock exams and it was time to let loose and party!!! As a boarder, if I wanted to stay out overnight, I needed permission.

By this stage I was practically adopted into Heather’s family as I had stayed at their place numerous times and this time was no exception. We went out on the town!!! On our night out, we bumped into guy friends we knew and were chatting in a queue, waiting to be carded to get into the club.

Heather is in front with one of the guys, I'm behind her with one of the other guys chit chatting and freezing! To be honest we were all a bit tiddly so I don’t know how the conversation came about.

What I do remember is that the guy talking to Heather  asks me “Who is your best friend Lolly?”. I looked at him confused like...duh! Isn’t it obvious? We are practically joint at the hip! But I said “ Of course it’s Heather”. I look at her and giggle.

She smiles back at me in what looks to me to be assurance. He then asks her “Heather, who’s your best friend?”. I roll my eyes at him and smile at her, waiting for her obvious answer. She looks at him and says “ oh thats easy! It’s Daphnie!”.

The smile seemed to be pasted on my face. I felt that if I blinked or moved an inch, I would shatter then and there. The voices became dim but I could hear her explanation “Daphnie moved to Japan some years ago but we have always kept in touch and she is still my best friend till today...”.

I don’t remember much of that night after that moment. We got back to hers and I waited till the next morning to speak to her about it because I still couldn’t believe my ears. I thought maybe I drank too much or something.

So I asked her if she remembered what she said the night before and what she meant by it. She told me “yeah. That’s what I said, and I still mean it”. I said “I thought we were best friends?!” and she proceeded to say the one sentence that devastated me completely…

“Just because I am YOUR best friend...does not mean that you are MY best friend. Don’t make a big deal out of this Lolly”.

To say that I was shattered is an understatement. She didn’t have to pause to think about it or feel sorry about it either. Do you know what it means to put someone in a certain place of importance and priority in your life only to find out that they didn’t rate you the same way? Ladies and Gentlemen…. That is the definition of unrequited love.

It means that they have been getting the benefits of that higher level of importance and care and affection and compromises and sacrifices and ALL that!!! But not reciprocating in the exact same way!!!

They did this knowing full well that they do not feel the same way but let you think they felt the same knowing they were reaping the benefits of that scenario without having to sacrifice anything on their end.

If that is not heart breaking…. I don’t know what is! And I’m sure, as a teenager, she did not fully comprehend or have the emotional intelligence to register how morally wrong that was, in my opinion.

Maybe that’s just who she is. I’d like to think that Heather of today has matured to the point that she does not knowingly do that to people. Or better yet, has learned not to be as insensitive.

Needless to say, things weren’t the same again. I got back to school and took the rest of the weekend to think through what it all meant.

Should I continue being the same despite her lack of reciprocity? Should I put her at the level that she put me in? Can I live with this friendship like this knowing that she doesn’t see me as her BFF? How do I handle this imbalance? Am i blowing this out of proportion?

After that, I was angry and depressed for a while in school. And although I tried to put up a good front and blame it on the upcoming finals… she knew things were different. Everyone did.

Everyone would ask what was wrong but I just didn’t have the heart to say it and what it really meant. Deep down I knew that an irreparable wound had left a mark on my heart.

In conclusion...

Now some of you would think “melodramatic much?!” and roll your eyes at me. It didn’t feel like I was being melodramatic. In fact till this day I remember and still feel the hurt of that moment, day, week, and so on.

It doesn’t hurt as much as it used to but it’s there. Whenever I see facebook remind me that it’s her birthday or someone from school speaks to me and asks me “have you heard from heather?” it’s like an old scar that still hurts if you poke it. It’s all just bitter sweet.

So there you have it! One of many many secrets brought to light from my hidden box of secrets! I hope you enjoyed reading about my unrequited love from a best friend. Follow me on Facebook and Instagram and lets discuss some of these secrets that no one talks about.

I love connecting with people and networking with other like minded people! Hopefully we will get to connect some more on some of my other posts as well.

In the meantime, has this ever happened to you before? How did it make you feel? Have you been Heather in this situation before? How did you handle it? Let me know in the comments below.

Stay tuned for part 2 of this series… you definitely don’t want to miss it. If you really don’t want to miss any of my stories or secrets, make sure you follow on all social media. I promise I won’t spam you!


Until the next post! Ciao!

Love,