Dear friend(s),

I’m not going to name you here because you’ve never been one for much attention (and neither am I), but I did want to thank you

I want to thank you for being one of very few to stick with me over the years. Most of my “friends” stopped talking to me after a year. However, with these friendships, there were never any violent breakups. There were no messy feelings I guess. I just wasn’t important enough for them to stick around. I never understood why it kept happening (and it still does). But it always had me feeling as if I wasn’t enough for them. I felt as if I would ever be special enough for even more than one person to want to be friends with me over a year. Maybe I wasn’t smart enough, pretty enough or rich enough.

Yet, to be entirely honest, I don’t really have answers. All I know is that it hurt.

But you were different. You value my friendship. You care enough to listen to me when I am upset. You’re the one friend that wanted to hang out with me when I came back from break when it seemed like everyone else was through with me or simply just “forgot” about me. You’re never more than a text or Snapchat away, and you genuinely appreciate my company.

You cared enough about me to value my mind. You considered me the smart friend. Not to make me feel better, but because you genuinely valued how I cared about school. You pushed me to reach for what I wanted and cheered me on when it happened. You were happy for me when I did well at music competitions and when I got that super high grade that I wanted more than anything.

You taught me to not take any "ish" from people. You taught me that I was good enough just the way I was. You weren’t afraid to jump on the backs of people that talked crap about me. You wiped away my tears when I cried about stupid boys and are willing to cry along with me at times. You've never been afraid to tell me flat-out that you think a guy will be bad for me when I am too oblivious, which probably saved me a lot more tears in the long run if we're being realistic.

We’re different in some ways but similar in most others. We have the same kind of perspective on life, and to be honest, I think that’s what’s most important. We see the world in the same way, and I genuinely think it’s hard to develop any kind of friendship/relationship if two people don’t view the world in the same light. That doesn’t equate to agreeing on every single issue. Yet anything we didn’t agree on we were able to work out, which I appreciated.

You’re amazing, and you need to know it.

Thank you!