A letter I will never send.
Dear ,
I must start by admitting that I am selfish and a coward; because I know that as I write this, you will never read this letter full of years worth of feelings. I’m not going to start this letter with all the sad and horrible things that happened to us and why this letter must be written. Instead I am going to start with acknowledging all the good things we went through together. If you are wondering why I am doing this, it feels wrong to discredit that we had a very deep and meaningful friendship for years. At one point, you were my best friend, and the person I would turn to with everything. A good amount of my best memories are with you. I will miss our late night rooftop talks, and laying in your room talking for hours about everything and nothing at the same time. I will miss summer days, roaming around town, stopping in fields to make daisy chains. I will never forget our crazy late night adventures; racing the clock to get back to our houses before curfew. You are part of the reason my music taste is what it is, and I’m thankful for that. I would have never known about so many movies and TV shows if it wasn’t for you. When we were friends, it was like a volcano. It was glorious, but it had caused destruction once. We knew that at some point it would cause destruction again.
Kayla once called you a swiss army knife of a person. You are handy, but at some point you are still a knife; you will end up stabbing the person who loves you. Let me tell you, as the person who was being stabbed it never got easier. The first time it happens, you tell yourself that you will be more careful next time. That this will never happen again. The second time, you feel stupid that you let it happen again. The third time, you start to wonder if you are the problem. After the fourth time it happens you start to accept that these things just happen, and there is nothing you can do about it. This is how I felt for all of my friendship with you. I started expecting you to leave me, after months of good times, because that is what you had done before. It took me a very long time to realize: that while your friendship meant everything to me, mine meant very little to you.
I have now realized that I was treated wrongly by you. No matter how badly I wanted to believe that you were a good friend to me; you were not. Good friends don’t ghost each other after months of hanging out. Good friends don’t leave on a trip to Paris without telling you until the day before they leave. Good friends don’t leave you alone at crowded parties, where you know no one. A good friend doesn’t manipulate others' opinions about you. A good friend doesn’t lie to you about their life. A good friend doesn’t make up rumors about you to get back into other people’s good graces. And lastly a good friend doesn’t haunt your dreams. Like you do mine.
Know that part of me will always miss you. Will treasure the good memories I have with you forever. This is the part of me that will be reminded of you whenever I see a Fast and Furious movie or listen to a Frank Ocean song. This is the part of me that will always love you. But the bigger part of me will always remember the scars you have left on me; will shake and cry when I start thinking of you too much. As Lauren reminds me, you are not part of my reality anymore. While that might be sad, I could not be more grateful. Goodbye, and I really do hope things work out for you. — Riley