Dear ex-friend,

I'm not mad at you, even though maybe I have reason to be. Just like you have reason to be mad at me. And I don't hate you. No matter how many times I thought I did since you stopped texting back. I don’t. Sometimes I miss you.

All the times, I miss you.

Not the you who would go days ignoring me in high school, your face cold and expressionless without offering an explanation as to why. Not the you who was often a compulsive liar. Not the you who liked to make me feel guilty and manipulated.

But the you who never failed to make me laugh. The you that I related to the most. The you that spent hours making long, corny video montages of all the pictures and memories we ever shared with heartfelt messages.

I don’t blame you for not talking to me anymore, either. It still hurts, though. This void is like a heavy sinking pit in my stomach, a black hole sucking up my intestines and still hungry for more. My heart, my lungs, my sanity...

I have no shame in admitting I shed tears for the loss of our friendship. Because you were such a great friend, when you were. One of my best friends. And when you weren’t, I resented you but I still loved you.

Funny how that works.

Strange how you could be the only person I wanted to talk to at times and the last person I wanted to talk to other times. Strange how much we have in common. Sometimes I swore I was looking into a mirror. Maybe that’s why other people in my life felt threatened by you. Because we were almost the same person, you and I. Honestly, it often pissed me off that I wasn’t able to completely figure you out. It wasn’t until I reflected on my own behaviors and mannerisms did I understand just how similar we really are.

So many parallels. Both hardheaded and stubborn as bulls. Both temperamental and emotional. Both so great at putting on a facade so no one would know something was wrong. Both loud and lively one moment and then reserved and distant the very next. Both lonely in our own right. Even though we had each other and a million other oblivious figures surrounding us at all hours of the day. I’m sorry if, in the end, I contributed to that feeling of loneliness.

I hate that I abandoned you. Because you didn’t deserve it, regardless of how many people told me you did. It's really easy to forget how grateful you should be for someone when so many others are in your ear telling you to cut them out of your life. And I fought those voices with everything in me. I fought the judgmental and the disdainful.

I didn’t see the person they saw. They saw someone who became a character, and put on a mask, and danced around for attention. I saw someone who used that mask as a shield, as protection.

I saw someone who was trapped. Someone who used their long fingernails to crack open their thoughts when no one was looking. And to claw for a hand to hold when no one offered theirs. I saw someone who escaped to a corner to lick their injured flesh when they were in pain. I saw someone who just wanted someone to notice these things.

And I did.

But as much as I hate to admit it, you were toxic for me. So maybe all this is for the better.

Please don’t hate me. Even if we never speak again. Just don’t hate me.