Chapter 8, Hindsight

A lot of you have been asking for the final vent of this series, here it is.

I’ve been sitting on it for a while now because - simply putting it - I don’t care anymore. That’s the beauty of the vents - it’s cathartic to get all the emotions out & what’s left is indifference. & besides, there’s new things brewing to be written about anyways #bless.

The following are the final texts between Lauren & I:

Lauren never responded.

You can feel my emotions in that last text. I act like a hard a** but I’m fragile when it comes to the people I care about.

So why write the vent sessions and make it so the friendship can’t be rebuilt? Because I saw what Lauren did to Grogda. You think I'm going to sit back while Lauren runs around talking sh*t about me for a couple of years only to come back when it's convenient for her? Yeah right.

But that doesn't mean I didn't miss Lauren initially. I was crushed how this ended. But the fact of the matter is, it's not just the vent sessions that made a continued friendship with Lauren impossible. It was Gary. Lauren staying with Gary was a bridge no-one in the friend group was willing to cross.

Gary’s a misogynist. He's volatile. He's a liability.

& you can't be someone's best friend & not support their relationship with their significant other. The chasm that causes is too large.

There's a lot of times I wonder what would have happened if we would have continued to blindly support Lauren and her relationship. Myself, Dana & Treslyn would have been bridesmaids in a wedding where the groom had wildly offended all of us...that wouldn't have worked. All of us would have been standing up there on Lauren’s wedding day thinking that one of our best friends was making the biggest mistake of her life.

It would have been so fake.

Ultimately we’ve come to the conclusion that there’s no scenario in which Lauren staying with Gary would have left the friend group intact. I mean hell, she was already in the midst of being cut out when she decided to have a tantrum like a petulant child & exit herself.

But I wish we could have saved our friend long before it got to that point.

I wish the second Gary spit out the horrifying words - "I'll hit a girl if I want to" - that I would have raised absolute hell. That I would have incessantly reminded Lauren of her worth & how she deserves a man who respects and values her (& ALL women for that matter).

Hindsight here, as always is 20/20…& there’s nothing to be done about the situation now but to learn from it. It’s time to move on.

Lesson learned? If your best friend starts dating an a**hole,

START A RIOT.

Till next time! xx