I still remember how it was before. You all were such a happy family, always cheerful and laughing together. We went to parks with each other and spent summers by the pool. Game nights were a blast, with your dad making jokes and your mom entertaining us with lots of stories. You and your siblings were so carefree, soaking up the moments of camaraderie and the irreplaceable experience of having two parents mutually in love with each other.

I was there from the beginning. The first time they ever started fighting, I remember you shutting your bedroom door and laughing about it. “Oh, they’re just in a bad mood,” you said. “They’ll stop soon.” But they didn’t stop. As time progressed, the shouts only got louder and the fights more frequent. When you called me up at 2 a.m. bawling your eyes out, I made my mom drive to your house and pick you up. I can still hear the echoes of your parents yelling at the top of their lungs.

Then you brought it up to me, tears streaming down your face. “I think my parents are going to get a divorce.”

“No,” I assured you. “They would never do that.” 11-year-old me was naïve. It was your parents. Of course they weren’t getting divorced. They were happy and in love. Remember when your dad bought us ice cream and your mom put her cone in his face and gave him an ice cream mustache? We all laughed till we cried, and went home with smiles on our faces. That’s who your parents were. Not this foreign couple who screamed at each other and went days without talking.

When I went over to your house now, it wasn’t the pleasant, welcoming place I remembered. Tension hung in the air like an unavoidable barrier keeping anyone within its borders void of happiness. They tried to put on a show for company, conversing like nothing was wrong, but the strain between them was obvious. We always shut ourselves away in your room to evade any awkward situations between two people who didn’t know how to love each other anymore.

I saw how it affected you -- mentally, emotionally, even physically at first. You didn’t eat much, and you were always tired because it kept you up at night to think about where things went wrong. As we got older, you were skeptical of relationships. “True love” became a hopeless myth to you and you sabotaged every almost-relationship that came your way because you were convinced it wouldn’t work out. After all, if the two people who had created your definition of love couldn’t find a way to keep the love going, what was the use in even trying?

I didn’t know what to do. My best friend was becoming cynical and I was a helpless bystander to this personal transformation you were undergoing. I missed the old you and longed for the way things were before it happened. But I had to accept the fact that things were different now, because that was the reality of it. All I could do was be something positive in your life and show you that maybe, just maybe, all relationships are different, and if two people are willing to give up that easily, then they shouldn’t have been together in the first place.

I hope I made things easier. I hope I helped, even if it was just to be someone who was there to talk when you needed someone to listen. I hope, beyond anything else, that you grow to find someone who demolishes all the negative outlooks you have toward love and proves that the best things in life are worth fighting for.