I wanted my first piece in my open letters to be someone that meant a lot to me. I wanted to write pieces in this bracket that meant something to people that aren’t in my life or don’t realise how important they truly are. It’s for the people who inspired me and helped shape the person I am. Those people could be teachers that taught me during school or the stranger I passed in the street at a time when I was at my weakest. But each person helped me, and I want them to know I appreciated it.
“An open letter to a broken friendship,”
Before I start, if there is even a small chance, you’ll read this, I want you to respect the friendship we created 20 years ago and read to the bottom.
It takes a bigger person to suck up their pride and admit wrongdoing than it does to be the type of person that buries their head in the sand. I’m not saying that I am above you, but I am tired of holding onto something that should have been buried years ago… apparently because of circumstances that hasn’t happened. So, think of this as closure.
You were my best friend and worst enemy all rolled into one big case of drama, and I know the same could be said for me. We have known each other for 20 of our almost 26 years on this planet. That’s an extremely long time and in that time, we have gone from being closer than sisters to being worse than strangers. We have hit every peak and crashed into every pit. But I can promise you now, no matter what you may think of me, it will never change the fact that I’d be there every time you needed. I would answer every call and every message with an open heart because I gave up holding onto anger around you years ago. You may have stopped classing me as a friend, doesn’t mean I stopped being one. I never did. You were just too angry to see it.
We haven’t spoke in three years and regardless of who said what, I haven’t slagged you off. I haven’t undermined our friendship and I would never downplay our friendship. I mean you’ve said some of the worst things to me you could have, and I still would be there for you because that is who I am. I am the person that dropped my niece’s birthday party to come around yours when you were upset. I am the person that held your hand countless times when you thought the world was crashing around you, but I am also the person that wears her heart on her sleeve and has more emotions than sense. I’m also the person that knows this is the hardest month of your life and it comes around every year, and I know you will feel weaker in August compared to every other month of the year but this isn’t at all a dig at you.
That last argument, we argued, and you said I was the cause of your mental health and that broke my heart. It isn’t true because looking back you had problems that I should have helped you with, but you shut me out before I could. You get something into your mind and there is no changing it. It’s one of the things I do admire about you. I admire that even though you have been through shit, you haven’t given up. But I am scared. I am scared that there are things in your life that you haven’t accepted and if you want to discuss it, I am always here with an open door, but that doesn’t mean that I want you actively in my life.
I have never stopped caring about you. I will never stop caring about you. I have a habit of taking things the wrong way and you have a way of wording things to make the biggest impact. And you always said that if you were to destroy someone, you would do it mentally and for a long time, I believed you. It took many counselling sessions to see that you played just as much a part in fucking up as I did. You can not preach to me that everything you said and did was peachy, it wasn’t. You go above and beyond when you get hurt to make sure that you’re not the only one affected. You make sure that they know they hurt you by hurting them just as much. It’s a great defence mechanism but it will cost you everything if you aren’t careful. I realised that I leaned on you more than you did me, I cared more and for a long time, it was one sided. Even after we stopped talking, it was still one sided.
I stopped being angry after you left because there was no point. We said things out of anger, and I weren’t about to stay angry at myself and, for the thousandth time, I found myself forgiving you. I forgave you without ever hearing an apology. I forgave you for what you said and how you acted. I forgave you for once again making me feel like my feelings didn’t matter and that you were the one being neglected. I am however going to say this once, I am sorry. I am sorry that I let my emotions get the better of me. I am sorry that I got too emotionally invested in our friendship that what you said felt like an attack long before it was one. I am sorry that I hurt you and I am sorry that it’s still hurting you. I am sorry that you haven’t found closure or peace in your life surrounding me and I hope that this letter helps you find that.
I stopped hurting over you when I realised that even though you have been your worst version of yourself regarding me, that I haven’t been the nicest to you either. I stopped hurting when I realised that for every bad and upsetting memory that has you in it, I have ones that made me smile. I realised that just because you find comfort in still slagging me off, I wish you nothing but health and happiness.
I can’t pretend that even after everything I don’t miss you because I do. 20 years ago, I signed up to be your friend for life and sometimes I sucked at it, but I’m only human and I’m far from perfect. That friendship meant celebrating with you at your best and embracing you when you were being quite frankly a pain in my ass. I agreed to love you for who you are, and I’ve known exactly who you are for years and yet I still love you. I love that at one point, nobody could have touched us. That we had the strongest bond any two people could have because we went through hell, sat with the devil and discussed plans for takeover. We kicked ass because when we were being honest and true with each other, there wasn’t a single person that could have got between us. You were and probably will always be my soul mate.
You know me better than you think. And even though your emotions have misguided us, you know that I have been there for you and held your hand more than you give me credit for. I know that you have made sure that I was nothing but a negative memory for you and I pity you for that. You were one of the first people I wanted to message when I found out I was pregnant. I didn’t and still haven’t spoke to you and I hate it. Not because I want you in my life, but because I thought you’d always be here. I never imagined my life without you in it. I guess I was optimistic that we had gone through some of the worst things imaginable and found a way back until that last argument.
There are days where I miss you. Where something will happen, or I’ll hear a joke and think of you. I’d think about how if you were there, we’d be laughing over something so small but filled with memories of a happier time. We talked about what would happen when we started our different families and got married. We talked about being god parents to each other’s children and bridesmaids at each other’s weddings. We spoke about growing old laughing at all the people that said we couldn’t be friends and how wrong they were. Yet none of them will happen, and if you can honestly say that doesn’t affect you, then the truth is my friendship never meant anything. I wouldn’t change the fact that you aren’t in my life because I have grown as a person thanks to our arguments. But I do miss and respect you more than you will ever know. I love you. I always will. You can’t go through the number of things that we did and not have that level of admiration for the other person.
You are strong, stubborn, determined and driven. You have passion and a brighter personality than you realise. You have come a long way and I know that your future is bright and happy. I just wish you could let it go. Let go of all the resentment you’ve held. Let go of the negativity that surrounds me in your mind and just accept that what we had, is something that I don’t think can and will ever be able to be understood by anyone that isn’t us. And sometimes, it’s even too much for us. Let go of your bitterness, because it will rub off on the wrong people and you risk losing them. Just focus on your life because you have the power to make it magical.
“No matter how many times we tell each other we hate each other ++ this is the final goodbye. Yet every time we need each other were always on the side-lines waiting to come back in. Thanks for being such a good reliable friend” – The tale of two friends – Does it ring a bell? It should. You wrote it and its still public on your profile. There are still pictures of me all over your social media and yet you still want the world to believe you hate me.
Girl quit playing and commit to a side. If you hate me, and if you honestly want to sit there and tell me you hate me, then have conviction. Don’t have my pictures on a profile that you’re still using and stop having my name come out of your mouth. You’ll be better off for it. But don’t ever sit there and tell me I failed at being your friend, because even now, id treat you like a friend whilst you needed me. I would never tell you that this is goodbye again, because that would mean I’m closing the door and locking it behind me. But I will tell you that it’s okay. It’s okay that we have grown and moved on with our lives, its okay that the once unbreakable friendship broke beyond repair, and its okay that we have both grown up. But we owe it to our friendship to just stop. To close the chapter and remember it as a memory a time long ago. But to say that I regret our friendship, would always be a lie.
I will never say that I was innocent, because I wasn’t. Far from it, but I won’t pretend that I was the worst person in the world. I have come a long way and learned a lot about myself in the process. I had to! I had to try and understand over 20 years worth of shit and examine everything after I got diagnosed, because it did play a part in how I acted. I have said some nasty hurtful things out of spite, I’ve retaliated out of anger and you were in my cross hairs. You got handed a fair share of shit, and I will never stop being sorry for that. I wish I had got help sooner, maybe I could have handled the way you said things better. But then, if it wasn’t for the fact that you made me believe I was the most toxic person in the world, that I thought if that was the case, I needed help. It turns out I’m not, it’s just sometimes, you can go through hell and back with someone and not have a place in each others lives. I can be a prick, I would never shy away from that, but I have always owned up to my mistakes.
You were my best friend for the longest time. No amount of bad memories will change the good. And I’d rather remember the positive and continue without any thoughts of the negative. So, thank you. Thank you for every time you picked me up, for every time you pushed me to be more and being the one person, I counted on for the hardest days of being a teenager. To me, school was us. All my school memories, have you in them and I would never change them. Thank you for getting into trouble with me and for getting me into trouble. Thank you for the long chats that seemed funnier because we were intoxicated and for the x factor audition inspired phone calls with your dad. Thank you for being the ying to my yang and being my right side. Thank you for listening to me and being as good of a friend as you could manage. But most of all, thank you for being “the Serena to my Blair”. My life has forever been changed by your presence in it, and that is why I will never hate you.
I hope wherever you are in the world, that you’re happy and healthy. I hope you never lose your smile and your light shines brighter than you imagine. I hope you find the man of your dreams and live happy ever after, because I want nothing but the best for you. I want you to be in the best place mentally with hope for the future. I want you to be everything I know you can and so much more! I wish you all the best because if I didn’t, I would never have been your friend in the first place. But most of all, I want you to keep smiling! The world needs to have your smile in it!
Open Up With Me 