Hi there,

I still think about you a lot. I think that makes sense, considering we’re still friends on Facebook and I occasionally see your posts and tagged photos come onto my dashboard. Sometimes I genuinely think about pressing that “ignore” button on your profile, which I’m often dumbly searching through… but that still seems weird, because I used to call you my best friend.

I remember when I met you on the first day of high school. We were both so awkward—me especially, and of course I still am—but you were just so darn friendly to me despite the fact that I was incredibly nervous being on a school bus for the first time. But you asked me my name before I had even had a chance to breath, and your mile-wide smile was infectious.

We weren’t so close at first, but it didn’t take long for you to learn how gullible I was. The “poster board” incident is still my go-to story for when I’m trying to describe just how easily fooled I can be. It’s also a wonderful indicator of our friendship, filled with teasing and jokes but also so much trust and confidence in one another.

I think that after I got over my crush on you was when I started to consider you my best friend. You were the guy I could tell anything and it wouldn’t be dumb. You were the only person who could truly cheer me up on my worst days, and keep me laughing for hours on my best. I could trust you to keep a secret, and I could always count on you to be there for me when I needed you.

Sometimes I regret helping you score a date with our mutual friend in our senior year of high school. I still wonder if you becoming her boyfriend created the cracks in our friendship, or if it was simply the passing of time that did us in. I don’t like playing the blame-game—but after finding out that she had been talking about me behind my back to everyone else in our group of friends, I think I have to assume that you were on the receiving end of many nasty comments about me. So maybe you believed them, whether or not they were even true.

I hate that I have to use the past tense when I talk about how close we were. I also hate that I can’t use the past tense when I talk about how much you still mean to me, because I’m pretty sure it’s not a mutual feeling anymore. That’s the thing about losing your best friend—you don’t just lose their presence, but you also lose any hope for getting them back in your life in the same way.

I don’t know if you think about me a lot, or if you’ve considered pressing “ignore” on my Facebook profile. I don’t really know if you care that we used to talk every day and suddenly a wedge was driven between us… and we never recovered. I don’t even know if you ever want us to recover, but I honestly doubt you do. And that’s probably what hurts the most. Or maybe what hurts the most is that friendship is a two-way street, but it only took one wrong turn to send you packing.

I’m still thankful that, even though parting was painful and still is painful, you made my life that much better for four years. If I could go and relive high school again, I would. Not for myself, because I was sick and unhappy for much of those years. No, I would relive it so I could have four more years with you in my life.

I miss you so much, but I hope that wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, you’re happy. You deserve all the happiness in the world, even if it’s not with me as your friend.

With love,

Zoe