30-Day Letter Challenge, Day 1

Day 1: A Letter to Your Best Friend

Dear J,

           

            You probably don’t still consider me your best friend.  To be truthful, in a sense I don’t consider you mine, either.  It’s been too long to claim you as my closest friend in any practical way—and yet, you are still so very dear to me.  I like to think I’m just as dear to you.  That I’m closer with them now…well, it’s fairly irrelevant, isn’t it? Maybe we don’t need each other like we did, but nine years of closeness doesn’t vanish in the blink of an eye.  True friendship exists outside of time.  Love doesn’t have an expiration date. 

            I’m sorry we had to drift apart, but I’m sure we both knew it was inescapable.  So many states apart…but if it’s any comfort, you were one of the puny three reasons I had to regret leaving Maryland.  I was glad to go—glad, glad, glad!  I hit the road and never looked back.  But you? You I missed.

           

            Drifting is easy, isn’t it?  Maybe—somehow, conversely—easiest with you, because I had no doubt that you regarded me with a great deal of love, even if we didn’t talk.  But recently something happened that gave me a jolt.

            You announced on Facebook that you were in a relationship.

            I knew it would happen this way.  I really did.  I knew that I wouldn’t even be aware you’d met someone, that you’d be serious before I ever knew there was someone to be serious about.  For all of that, it stopped me cold.  I knew, but I didn’t really expect it—yet.

            Sigh.

For all we’re both attending college now, you’re at such a very different place in your life.  You’ll probably be engaged when you graduate.  I’m not sorry; I only hope he deserves you.  But, oh, I don’t like not knowing these things!  I wish I could have seen it—could have stood by you, closet romantics, side by side—as you discovered the joys of being liked, and liking in return!  You’ve left me so far behind; walked through a door into a room I’ve barely viewed through a peephole.

I love you.  I wish you all possible happiness.  Playmate, companion, second sister—oh, how I miss you when I let myself feel it!  You, and your laughter and your utter obnoxiousness when you lose at cards, your big heart and your love of beauty and adventure—an earth-bound dreamer, just like me.  Most of all, your loyalty, no matter how much we disagreed. 

But it’s all right.  I always knew we’d end up leading separate lives.  I just hope you know that I will—and I say this with utter seriousness—be your friend until the day I die.  Promise me that you’ll keep a little corner of your heart for me: your goofy A, who made you laugh at the most outrageous of things.

You will—won’t you?