Let me make it a point to first say that I intend not to win you all over with cliches about the end of friendships and the tragedy that is your late-teens. Instead, I intend to publicly express and then shame both myself and the anonymous “others” for the poorly handled falling out. It’s the summer, I’m tired, and the writing bug has a bite on me, though unfortunately, it is not on the nonfiction ass. This is all the sappy I have left in the barren catacombs of my heart, and I’m going to try my hardest to keep this brief.

There are multiple handfuls of actions that I took in high school that now leave me, at times physically squirming, with regret. About a year ago, I accidentally backed my phone up to the wrong year and ended up in a time warp, rediscovering the year 2014 in the worst way possible: through a series of since-then deleted photos and cringe-worthy (and, again, up-until-that-point deleted) text messages. It contained a series of airy exchanges with people I had so little in common with, that I oftentimes would end up in a conversation consisting almost entirely of emojis. This may sound like typical sophomore in high school behavior, however, being forced to revisit that time 2-years-past as a boldly matured senior was miserable, and also incredibly disheartening. These people, whom I once considered friends, are among the first group of people that I am very happy to no longer be friends with, but also apologetic to for being dishonest with them.

I wasn’t being myself, and it had something to do with the way you made me feel, but mostly to do with my own self-esteem and self-image and desire to fit in. I can’t pretend as if I grew from our having been together, and even with a handful of firsts being at your hands, I don’t feel like what I experienced in our time together was at all genuine. In the time that followed, in the time where we grew apart, exchanging no more than a few smiles, the occasional small talk at a sports game or at the mall, I grew to realize my ingenuity, and can presently recognize that whatever we had wasn’t real, or special, or anything worth holding onto. I am older now, I am happier with myself now, and I don’t need you to reassure my self-confidence anymore. Am I confident? HECK NO, but I am growing and learning every day how to love my inability to conduct conversation and my wide hips, and it’s a growth that doesn’t require your cheering on.

And to the rest of you, the ones who said "We should hang out sometime!" and then proceeded to never hang out, ever: there’s a reason we went down the way we did. It’s safe to say that, let alone a few of my dearest pals, the realm of our common interests overlapped infrequently and often over silly things like pizza and Fleetwood Mac. Having acquaintances, and being acquaintances, is a great thing. There’s no reason to pretend that you’d really want to see me in any setting more personal than a group trip to Applebee's. It has taken distance to figure out that being acquaintances was never a bad thing, but that the real bad thing was that there was this fake effort to perhaps, someday, be something more than just that.

If you didn’t really want to see me, then there was no reason to fake interest in just that. It hurt at first, the fake "miss you!"s and general discomfort of small talk. But as I’ve grown, I’ve realized that this was a reflection of your true character; a character that I would rather not associate with anymore. I have my friends; real, good friends that reach out to me and talk to me about everything and anything and that put real, good smiles on my face. There’s no ingenuity, no pitiful effort to pretend that we’re friends, but instead honest and open emotion. These are the people I need, not you.