To the best friend who left me behind,

You know who you are, and if you don’t, you will soon.

A year ago I thought things were OK with us. Sure, we had gotten into an argument back in February, but I thought we had fixed things after hanging out and talking for hours back in June.

We were still talking pretty regularly, and I tried my hardest to make sure I tried to do things with you before you left for college, where I thought you would be going somewhere three hours away. I wanted to make sure I saw you before you left, make sure I saw you and gave you your birthday present.

But then you stopped replying.

And then I found out that you changed schools; instead of three hours away, you were still right here in town 15 minutes away from me like you always had been. I talked to you about school, about stuff you’d gotten for your dorm that we both hoped would come in “minion”-themed Amazon boxes back in July, and you never thought to mention to me after that that you were sticking around town.

Up until July of last year, we’d be constantly chatting on Facebook, you always seemed to either not be able to find your phone or be out of minutes, so Facebook made the most sense. I could always count on at least one message from you every day at night when we’d chat the most when we weren’t doing schoolwork or you weren’t working.

Three months went by and I never heard a word from you. Our everyday messages were no more, but I understood. You were in college full-time now, you were adjusting to your new lifestyle, and I completely understood; things were changing for me, and I was busy too.

Three months went by before you reached out to me for the first time in a long time only to ask me a question that had nothing to do with me or how I was doing.

Another month went by before I reached out to you after my family saw you at your work and you never even replied.

Then my birthday came around and you didn’t post on my Facebook or send me a text. Nothing. I was shocked and hurt, especially considering I had made sure I both texted and messaged you and posted on Facebook on your birthday four months before. I guess you did wish me a happy belated birthday, but it was only because again I was the one who reached out to you trying to talk to you and stay friends with you.

I reached out again in February, asking you questions about what you did for graduation, how the ACT was. And that was the last time I talked to you.

I invited you to my graduation party and you never RSVP’d, never texted or messaged me congrats. You didn’t even sign the card your parents sent me. This was a year after I not only stayed at your graduation party for two and a half hours but went to your graduation ceremony to see you play the piano.

Since last year, I’ve been the one to reach out to you, try to make conversation, but it’s hard when the person you’re talking to obviously doesn’t want to. I tried to bring up the past, but there’s only so much reminiscing one can do before going crazy.

I used to tell you everything, but apparently, that was “annoying.”

There’s a slim chance you’ll read this; you haven’t even “liked” anything I’ve posted for nearly a year now where before you would be the first to like everything I posted.

And it’s not like you haven’t been on Facebook, which is probably the thing that bugs me the most.

But I’m not writing this to dog you, to try to make you feel bad. I’m writing this because I want you to know that I’m moving on.

Since you stopped talking to me, I’ve made more friends, friends that will stick up for me when other people are talking about me behind my back, something that apparently you just couldn’t do because you didn’t want to deal with confrontation. You never even understood what your friends put me through before we were so close. But I never complained once that you were still friends with them.

Since you stopped talking to me, I’ve made friends who truly care about me and don’t tell me that they’re sick of hearing about certain people and things in my life.

Since you stopped talking to me, I’ve made friends who understand why I do what I do, why I spend my weekends in an ice rink.

Since you stopped talking to me, I’ve made friends who like me just the way I am.

Sometimes I see things on Facebook and think of you because we constantly used to share goofy things and anything that had to do with “Minions” with each other. Since you stopped talking to me, I’ve shared multiple things with you that you can’t even bother to “like,” bother to acknowledge my existence.

Since you’ve stopped talking to me, I’ve learned that friends like you for who you are, not just parts of who you are. I’ve learned that true friends are there for you no matter if it’s two o’clock in the afternoon and you’re bored and want to talk or if it’s two in the morning and you’re freaking out because it’s storming and you can’t sleep.

But the most important thing I’ve learned is that people change, and sometimes they change for the worse and decide that they’re too good for their “old friends.”

You may have changed in the past year, but I have too.

But I can promise you one thing: If our roles were reversed and I was the one who was going to college a year before you, I never would’ve done this to you and I never will do this to my real best friend who’s not going to college near me.

For a while, I wanted to patch things up; I wanted to go back to being best friends, being so close and talking so much. I wanted to go back to when we’d chat for hours on end about absolutely nothing. I wanted to go back to staying up late and writing ridiculous parodies to popular songs together on Google Docs. I wanted to go back to editing papers with you for our writing class and writing notes in the margins of our notebooks during writing class.

But looking back, I don’t think that it’s worth it. I’ve changed, you’ve changed, but I don’t think you’ve changed enough. I don’t want my best friend to be someone who doesn’t want to hear about certain things in my life that are such a huge part of it. I don’t want to be best friends with someone who doesn’t understand my relationships with the friends I consider to be family.

I don’t want a best friend who can’t bother to reach out and say hi, or text me a quick happy birthday on my 18th birthday or congratulations on graduation day.

I don’t want a best friend who makes me think I’m a drama queen because I feel a certain way or react to a situation in a certain way.

I don’t want a best friend who makes digs at the stories I wrote because of the content. To this day you’re the only one I shared the stories I wrote with and it hurt my heart when you’d make comments like you did. You never quite understood how personal they were to me and how special it was that I shared them with you.

What I want is the best friend I wrote an essay about, that I raved about in paragraph after paragraph, page after page. The best friend that I thought was there for me no matter what. The best friend that I thought would be with me until the end.

But I don’t think I’m going to get her back anytime soon.

The thing is, I didn’t want you to “win”; I didn’t want to let you know that you affected me. But I’m sitting here writing this and putting my pride aside to let you know that what you did hurt me, it affected me, and I don’t know if I will ever look at you the same.

I doubt you’ve read any of this, let alone gotten this far, but if you are reading this, I want you to know, I want to remind you of one thing: I was there for you, all the time, and I never, ever would’ve done to you what you did to me.

Sincerely,

The Best Friend You Left Behind