An open letter to: my best friend

To the one who used to be my best friend,

I honestly don’t know how to put my feelings for you into words. I don’t know how to confess just how grateful I am to you and so very thankful for the memories we share, every single one of them. There were a million other people and a million other possibilities, and yet we found each other. The first day I saw you, well, I never thought you would be someone I’d come to love so much in so less time. We were glued together all the time and remember, how people even started getting our names mixed at one point? Crazy times.

Every time I remember school, I can’t help but remember you. It’s been a while, how are you? I’m sure, and hope, that you’ve been well and living just as fabulously as you’ve always lived. You deserve everything good in this world.

When I shifted to the city you lived in, it was tough. To move into a familiar but unknown City and not have you to fall back on. But you had your own life to handle, and I was acting too clingy. For a second, I had forgotten you are also human with more roles than just being my best friend. I made myself believe that you’d always stay with me. I always counted you as my plus one, always made plans thinking you’d never cancel. But then, you started ignoring my texts and canceling our plans. And I guess it was my fault.

I loved you so much, but I didn’t realize even love can become an ocean to drown in. I kept giving and giving and maybe, that’s why you outgrew me? I hope so. I hope you left because you couldn’t handle it anymore. I hope it is not because you couldn’t love me anymore. I drowned you, didn’t I?

That’s why you stopped initiating conversations and jumped off our bandwagon the moment it slowed. Because I overcrowded the van, that’s exactly why, right?

Not because I couldn’t understand you or anything else I can’t even imagine right now? I wouldn’t know now why you left, but I guess that is for the better. Open endings just mean it’s an ending left to the viewers, and we get to choose what happens to the characters once the curtain closes. I’m happier this way. And I hope you are, too.

Although now, our memories are a lot more bittersweet to me, and maybe that’s just how one looks back at the friendships that no longer exist. I still reminisce about them because they helped me become who I am.

Remember when we used to sit together in the back corner of the class and do everything except study? or that time when we stopped by your old school and you showed me around? or when we named your Scooty a Nut-case because it started acting weird? or when you came in school uniform to meet me because you were supposedly going to school in our holidays for doubts? Those times were so fun.

So, thank you so much for being there. Thank you for all the days you helped me through my anxiety and all the times when you believed in me when even I couldn’t. Every moment I spend with you was filled with joy and it was all because it was spent with you. Thank you for teaching me to live in the moment and to see people as the little kind souls that they all are always trying to be (or have the potential to be). Thank you for tolerating me when I was the least amiable, and thank you for being on my side when it felt like the world wanted to push me down. Thank you for letting me know you.

I miss you still but I don’t wish to turn back time anymore. And I don’t find myself wanting to text you at 3 am to ask why we fell apart. I don’t wish to be friends again because I don't know how to talk to a familiar stranger. But I wish and hope, sincerely, that these words, this letter, somehow, reaches you and lets you know that I am always, always wishing you well.

Love,

The one who used to be your best friend

-s