I guess I should have known from the very beginning that I was better off staying away from you.

I was super intimidated by you at first. As much as I was trying not to stereotype and assume, you looked just like the classic mean girl. You gave off this cool-but-cold vibe that instantly made me feel a little inferior every time I looked at you (granted, my insecurity is no one's problem but my own, but that's a different story).

But then, the miraculous happened and you talked to me. Actually, you talked to everyone. This rich, cool girl, a real-life Barbie, talked to me and included basically every single girl on our floor. And then, we became friends.

Something was always off, though. You constantly talked shit about other people, especially other girls. You criticized people's appearances - in fact, you even criticized your own, even after constant and honest reassurances from me and our other friends that you were literally gorgeous. You're an insecure person, which I saw from the get-go. I am too, but the difference is that you would snipe at other girls behind their backs, and even though I didn't want to see it at the time, now I know that it was your biggest coping mechanism to make yourself feel better. And that should have been my first clue that you were trouble.

I was stupid to think that you would never say anything like that about me. As if I was the one person special enough to be immune to your judgment. I remember the day we were sitting in your car and you were tearing apart a friend of mine that was actually one of my closest ones. That should have been where I cut it off with you, but I didn't. It was because of the words I so clearly remember you telling me just a few minutes later, "You're my best friend at college."

I felt so conflicted. I felt terrible for my friend who you'd just told me you hated (two hours before going to her room and telling her you missed her over Thanksgiving break). But at the same time, I felt honored to be liked by someone as "cool" as you. At the time, obtaining the title of your best friend seemed like the highest praise I could get. It was such a stupid, high school-esque ideal, but I felt it nonetheless.

And then, two months later, all of that came crashing down.

I found out about the lie that you'd told about me. The lie that ruined my friendship with at least three people. And the funny thing is, I never gave you a single reason to turn your back on me - you just did. I was nothing but blindly loyal to you and you decided to betray that. For what, I still don't know. Sometimes I really wish I could ask you. I wish you were the type of person who could admit that you were wrong and actually sit down with something to explain the things that you did.

Because the thing is if you would talk to me about what's going on in your head, in your life, whatever, maybe I could understand. And maybe I'm just naive, and some people are just bad people who do bad things for no reason, but I really want to believe that that isn't you. For both of our sakes, I want to believe that deep down, you're a good person, who feels at least an ounce of shame for what you did.

I know I don't know you that well. You've talked about a lot of things with me, but you've never really talked about how any of those things have made you felt. I don't believe that someone could do and say all the things that you've done without having something in their lives that's led them to stoop this low. I understand that no one's life is perfect, and that includes yours, and from some of the things you've told me about your past, about your family, I've made a few wild guesses about why you might be the way you are now. I'm not saying that it's an excuse for what you did, but I'm saying that maybe I understand why you felt the urge to do it.

I know that I'll never get an answer from you. I know that the best thing I can do is try to move on. And as much as it bothers me, I know that I have to forgive you. If nothing else, I want to prove to myself that I would never step down to your level and that I'm better than that. So I'll end this by saying that whatever it is that stresses you out, that keeps you up at night, that makes you feel so insecure and inadequate that you feel the need to tear people down to build yourself up...I hope that it gets better. I hope that you can heal, and I honestly wish you the best.