A friendship of more then ten years generally represents a solid, fundamental relationship capable of weathering any storm.  No matter the height of the flood or depth of the hail or strength of the wind, such bonds hold the power to overcome.  That vigor stems from immutable love between two caring people.

Or so I thought.

Less than two weeks before my birthday in December, I sat giggling and carrying on like a schoolboy with a dear friend of mine.  After more than a decade of family-like amity, our closeness allowed us to share in the good and the bad all humans experience.  We had seen and continued to see each other through the best and worst of times.

So it was with more than a bit of dismay that a short time later I came to realize something had come between us.  Considering our last conversation had been cordial and caring, and we had walked away from each other that morning with smiles on our faces and guffaws on our breath, I could not understand what had taken place within a few days that could have so negatively altered the landscape betwixt us.

Another mutual friend had contacted me to discuss plans for my birthday.  Now let me be clear on this: I generally don’t make a big deal out of my birthday.  I prefer simple events with a few friends, something like going to dinner or a movie, having a few drinks, and enjoying heartfelt camaraderie.  When our mutual friend called, we both suggested a quiet lunch or dinner with drinks.  That sounded wonderful to me.

He then asked if our other friend would attend.  They had apparently spoken about these plans earlier in the day and he had felt something was amiss, that a pungent animosity had welled up and seemed destined to taint the celebration.  That news shocked me for, as I said, the last time my friend and I spoke had been affably relaxed, something I had come to expect over the ten years since we had met.

Knowing that not a single inimical event had taken place between us since then, I felt certain he had misunderstood, or perhaps it had just been a bad day for our mutual friend, one of those moments when one is caught off-guard due to a mind full of serious matters.  With that assumption safely tucked away in my mind, I thought nothing more of it.

That is, until I called my friend to ask directly whether they would like to join us for lunch and some drinks to celebrate my birthday.  To say the other end of the phone rested on a cold shoulder would be to understate matters so egregiously as to falsely intimate friendship where none existed.

I was horrified to be treated so coldly without knowledge or participation in the cause.  The ho-hum response to my call and the surly indifference to the invitation pierced me so completely that it brought tears to my eyes.

And since then?  I have reached out to this friend, have offered a generic apology for whatever wrong is perceived to have been committed by me (despite knowing no such thing took place, one can never be too sure…), and have endured continual mistreatment at the hands of one from whom such a thing is alien.  Sure, we’ve had our problems before.  What friendship hasn’t?  But we’ve always overcome them, skipped a few beats and immediately found our way back on track by talking to each other, most of the time ending in silly laughs about misinterpretations, misunderstandings, and other trivial matters easily discarded as senseless folly by mindless humans.

But not this time.

The stark contrast in this friend’s demeanor is unbelievable.  Their continual inferences to other mutual friends that I have somehow committed a terrible wrong are confusing.  Despite my attempts to bridge the gap and mend whatever broken fences lie across the landscape of our relationship, all indications are that there is some deep resentment for which I can offer no explanation and through which I cannot break.  It’s unfortunate and disappointing.  I love this friend dearly.  We have always shared something meaningful, wonderful even, and yet it now appears to have been thrown away with careless ease in response to some perceived wrong in which I did not participate but for which I obviously carry sole responsibility.  And my attempts to identify and resolve the issue are met with vicious silence and third-party innuendo.  It’s shameful.

But what’s more shameful than this petty display of immaturity and selfishness, more shameful even than inventing a wrong and wielding it like a cudgel against a dear and close friend, is that I have decided, after a month, that it’s no longer in my best interest to pursue a resolution as I continue hearing from others that I must be a mean bastard for whatever I’ve done.  That whatever being nothing, being unspoken, being unidentified, and being a creation in the mind of someone else who created an imaginary incident over the course of days following a wonderfully amiable visit with each other.  Somehow we went from that to utter and complete chaos, to a hateful silence.

I may never know why more than a decade of devoted, intimate, close friendship has been so easily tossed by the wayside.  I may never know what unspeakable act I am blamed for that took place in my absence.  I may never know why it suddenly became acceptable to attempt revenge by undermining my friendships with others.

You see, it would be one thing if I alone were the victim of this self-imposed isolation and animosity, but I’m not.  Several of our mutual friends have likewise been the targets of some pretty cruel exchanges with this one friend, some conversations that left a few people terribly hurt, offended, and confused.  All of this has taken place over the course of the last month.  It leaves each us with the clear knowledge that we, in fact, are not to blame, yet it likewise worries and concerns us since we appear unable to resolve the issues in their entirety—whatever those issues might be.  Some appear to have been forgiven, others seem to have been offered reprieve from the maliciousness by way of a “we’re just gonna pretend that didn’t happen” approach, and yet others have simply given up altogether.

And that’s where I have finally landed.  It would be one thing if we had spoken or I had talked about her over the course of the few days following that morning encounter when the world was wonderful and all was well.  But neither of those things happened.  It would be one thing if I was the only person who had received the sharp end of this person’s spite.  But I’m not.  It would be one thing if maturity controlled the matter and an explanation was given for whatever perceived wrong I have committed.  But that’s not happening.

So the unspoken hurt will continue for both of us.  There’s nothing more I can do to address the matter.  I swallowed my pride and offered a heartfelt request for forgiveness—one stated such that it made clear I didn’t know what I had possibly done but that it seemed clear I had somehow hurt this person.  Although I very much doubted that given the facts of the matter (unless the most crippling hurt can take place without my involvement, that is).  Yet everything has resulted in me spinning my wheels.

Whatever storm has stricken us so cataclysmically appears to have caused irreparable harm.  That’s a painful fact I must now accept.  While I feel guilt for not knowing what went wrong, I do not blame myself for this tragedy.  At least not entirely.