Former Best Friend,

It has been about a year since our friendship took a turn for the worst —a.k.a. when we stopped being friends. Our friendship came to a halt suddenly, and I wasn't sure how to handle it. It was weird sitting next to you in class and not talking or seeing you and all of our old friends hanging out without me. We had been through all of high school together, and as it came to a close, so did our friendship.

I'm not writing this to say that I was right and you were wrong in how our friendship ended. In fact, I'm not sure who was. I'm trying to come across rude, or to make you feel bad. I still think about our friendship and what happened, so I just want to lay it all out.

I don't think the end of our friendship was something we planned. I can't put a finger on when it was over, exactly. As second semester of senior year started, however, our friendship changed. I had to be informed by our other close friend of the mean comments you were saying about me. Once I heard this multiple times, I joined in on the trash talking. I'm not proud of this, but my feelings were hurt. As time went on, I did have the "privilege" of hearing you say how you felt about me to our other close friend. We were a tight group of three, and when we would be hanging out and I would step out of the room, you would make it apparent how you felt about me. You probably don't know that I ever heard you, but I did. Looking back, I wish I would have said something. Maybe then we could have talked it out, or at least had some closure as to why our friendship was falling apart.

I hope we can both agree that our friendship ended in a very immature way. Jealousy and different interests had a lot to do with it, and we weren't accepting of the fact that we were becoming different people. As you began to do one thing, I did another. You hung out with certain people, and I hung out with the opposite. At some point during last year, we got mad at each other for this, or for something else we did and didn't even try to fix it.

I wish this hadn't happened. We were such good friends, spending every lunch period together and scheduling our classes around each other. We shared so many special memories and laughs as we tackled high school together. I can't believe all of that stopped so suddenly. I'm not sure who got fed up of the other first, but it happened at pretty similar times. I never felt that you were directly pushing me away, and I don't think I ever meant to do the same to you. Our lives were just going to two very different directions, and we couldn't accept that.

Even though I said some pretty nasty things about you when I was mad at you, I don't think I meant any of it. I was hurt and confused as to why you were doing the same to me. If I couldn't beat you, why didn't I just join you? For the entire second semester of senior year, we went back and fourth with making rude comments behind each others back, and to each others face. I wish we wouldn't have done that.

Even though our friendship didn't have a simple, gradual ending like many close friendships have, I'm not angry. I'm not angry at you for what you said and did, and I hope you're not angry at me for the same. I will always look back at the good memories of our friendship and smile because I don't know how I would have gotten through high school without you. I hope that you are loving college life and that you are happy with wherever life takes you.