Lost Friends

I've had many people with whom I was friends, who are no longer in my life. Sometimes, with some of them, the closure didn't always come when the relationship ended. Actually, many of my broken friendships have been that way. Where you think about that person on and off for a while afterwards, silently figuring out how something that you thought had such nice moments, turned so sour.

I'm sure most people experience such grievances in the realm of friendships. Where at some stage in your life, you're no longer close, or in close proximity, to someone who you once considered a good friend.

This thread is about writing letters to the ghosts of lost friends. For self catharsis more than anything. Saying whatever you need to say, or want to say, to someone who was once a friend, and now only a memory.

Here's one of my mine...

Background info:
John was a friend of mine from when I lived in England for a little while. We both lived on campus, in the same hall, his door was directly opposite mine.

I remember when I met him, not really a meeting, because it was for like a few seconds when I was moving my things in. My memory of it is sort of like our opposite doors were both open for a moment and I looked and saw him and he had looked up and waved ..something like that but what I mainly remember is his face. We're not friends any longer. I feel I have things that I want to say, I don't know if it's to him, or for me, to get it off my heart. I don't feel like saying it to him actually, because I don't believe he will listen.

...

The last email I sent you was harsh. Don't take that statement as an apology. Because I'm not sorry for sending it.

I really had thought that I was special to you, the way you were special to me. We met in 2003. That was 9 years ago this year. I had hoped, always hoped that we would get to meet each other again, in person, and have a laugh, joke about So*****y, reminisce about that short time we spent living where we did, that we would just get a chance to look at each other and smile.

I know you thought about me in a romantic way, we both knew that. As for me, I know I liked you back - whether it was romantic, I can't say, the hardships of my own life led me to be more confused than anything. I know I was terrified that I had held your hand. Terrified of being reprimanded.

But those things were convolutions. For me anyway. Because I had thought that first and foremost that you were a friend. And you were. I really liked you. When I was leaving, I drew that picture for you, I told you that the good bye gift I wanted for you didn't exist, so I drew what it was instead. I feel so hurt, like I wonder what you did with it, whether you threw it away or whether you hid it somewhere, never to come across it again.

What was it, a year, two years ago? when we both through our own separate lives ended up being on the same soil as each other once again. Only half a day's drive away from a hi how's it going. And you didn't want to. You didn't want to see me. You didn't say it in those words, your avoidance of the topic was enough. I read through your bs.

You became another guy. Where once you have a permanent gf by your side, you'll keep your 'real' friends, so long as that friend is a guy. Not a girl. Not me. Not me who made you feel that you were special, actually truly special, despite your own fuckedupness. Despite your own lack of faith in yourself.

I still think about you. And maybe I will again.

But I feel like we will never, ever be friends again, the way I thought and had hoped we would be. Unless you fess up and admit whatever it is that you run away from. I know that my last email must have given you fuel to use my words to skew your perception of me - and you could only do that, rather than see that my reactions came as a result of your unspoken betrayal, if you wanted to forget me all along.

I hope you stumble across this one day, and connect to that feeling again, that feeling you felt when we would hang out, that feeling that drove you to walk away without sharing a proper farewell.

Maybe that was your ploy all along - you were after all a tricky fucker. That if you didn't give me a chance to say goodbye to you, that I would always be attached to you. Maybe that is why I am writing this now, to say goodbye, which is something you robbed me of the day we were departing paths at whatever train station it was. It was selfish of you to have left so abruptly with just said a seeya, or whatever word it was that you used, followed with a quick turn, walking away into the crowd, not even waiting for me to respond with anything back.

It seems you didn't really see me as a person after all. I was just a girl you wanted to get with. Not a person who you cared about, who cared about you back.