A Letter To The Friend I Ghosted

The first thing you should know is that it’s not you, it’s me…

Dear You,

The years have come and gone and I have thought time and time again about reaching out. You’ve graduated, been promoted, moved in with your partner, finally gotten that kitten, ran that marathon, had the wedding, bought a kitten and your kid smiles just like how I remember you did. You look happy, I hope you’re happy.

Over the years I have decluttered my social media, my Facebook which I stopped posting on, the Instagram account that doesn’t have any recent pictures of myself and then of course Twitter where I am most active but still hide behind the witticisms of my words. I have culled these platforms, weeding vague acquaintances, pity accepts and blurred faces from the past, and though I come to hover over your name with each new purge, I have never been able to press delete, to sever the virtual remnants of what was once solid friendship.

I won’t go as far as to presume you’ve thought about me over the last ten years, but you should know that I have thought about you. Fleetingly in the odd drift down memory lane and then for longer stretches during the conceptualized conversations we have when you confront me, and I explain why I stopped being your friend.

The first thing you should know is that for the most part, it’s not you it’s me.

Preferring to keep to myself where I can, I don’t have a friends list as long as my arm and I look at the ones that I do have with a timer above their heads. I glance up at the numbers counting down waiting for it to hit zero, where either they get tired of the lack of effort on my part in our friendship, or I get tired of waiting for them too. Anti-social, neurotic and a questionably dark humour, ultimately I am not wired to be around people who I can’t be myself around.

“You bored me”

The callous and cold me could never be this blunt with you, but it’s true. I am far from an interesting person but your idea of what was fun left me dreading our meetups. I would prepare in advance by practicing wide-eyed smiles and feigning sounds of enjoyment that I would use sparingly least you noticed.

The things we spoke about were so shallow I could scarcely remember them when we parted ways. It struck me that we could have been friends — close friends — for so long and yet be as if we had known each other only a few weeks.

I should have spoken up, chosen our activities brought up a taboo subject just to spark a little fire under us, tried harder. But I can only speak from a place of retrospect, and I know that I didn’t.

“I was never truly comfortable in your house”

It was all perfectly civil. My shoes would come off and we would go to the living room where I would sit on one sofa and you would sit on another, and we would watch whatever sitcom rerun was on, laughing along with the prerecorded track.

It dawned on me, my hands placed pleasantly in my lap that I would be a bit more at ease if my feet were up on the couch, if I had a blanket or if we chose what to watch together, talking over the characters. I had been coming over for years and my breath was still held as I kept the anxiety at bay feeling like a bull in a china shop.

There was nothing you could have done about this, you made me feel as welcome as you could, but the breath I would expel whenever I left was all I was able to truly concentrate on.

“You judged my way of life”

The term weird was thrown around too often when I described my family. The food we ate, the traditions we had carved out, the things that made us, us.

The way your family did things was the correct way and the way mine did ours was the wrong way. You never tried to understand, or simply just not comment despite the defensive tone I would use.

Who I spoke to, how I dressed, my lack of makeup — it was all up for grabs, but it was the comments about my home life that got me the most.

I brought it up once, you held your ground. Out loud I dropped it, but inside my eyes glanced up to see your timer getting closer and closer to zero.

“You told me I couldn’t just because you couldn’t”

Towards the end, I realized that you thought you were better than me. You always had really, and it’s hard to say if you even knew you acted that way. I suppose I never noticed because I knew it wasn’t true.

Life had put you a step ahead of me, and I was glad to know that someone was out there testing the waters before it was my turn to jump in. However, when you decided to climb out of the pool early, you tried to convince me not to go in at all. You had been stung, and you were so smug in your adamance that this meant I would be stung too.

It never occurred to you that I would be perfectly fine in the water on my own, and with that, your clock had run out of time.

Of all the things I wonder the most; When it finally happened were you taken by surprise? Do you think we drifted apart or do you know that I worked slowly, carefully, quietly for a year to cut the rope that joined us together as friends? I have performed this act time and time again that its steps are surgically designed in such a way that the disentanglement from us to me and you is as subtle and pain free as possible.

Although I was the one to dissolve the possibilities of our friendship, the baby showers we could have organized for one another, the trips we could have taken, the support system we could have had in one another — what I want you to know is that if I could turn back time, I would do it all again.

In some ways, you must know. The waves for reestablishing communication have been kept wide enough to slip through should I wish. I am free to like, comment and direct message you where I wish and have chosen not to.

You look happy, I want nothing but happiness for you — and for myself, which is why things are better left how they are. How I’ve made them.

Best wishes and from a place that is sure to fade,

Your old friend.