on a best friend across the ocean.
In these years, I’ve said a lot of good byes to people. And like everything...over time you become desensitized. After a while, goodbyes feel like routines. It begins to feel inevitable, that everyone will have one day they move away.Â
You learn to be a little less attached, because everyone says goodbye so easily, and it feels silly to take it so hard.Â
But you, saying goodbye to you was the most difficult. I’ve had a lot of time to be ready for you to leave. I’ve known it would come one day, for years...long since the days of our high school times.
But I can only say, that in the moments of that evening, as we waited to go to the airport...that in the comfort and peace and happiness of those last moments together, that I was indescribably sad that these days would not happen again for a long time.Â
And as we waited to part, I thought to myself, that I have so many things to say to you. That I’ve never had enough time in all these years to say everything I’ve wanted. That in all this time we never have seemed to have enough time together, and that I am so sad that we will only have less in the coming years.Â
If you had been anyone else, perhaps I would have been aggrieved in these years in the struggle for your time. And maybe, if you had been anyone else, I would have given up, whether it be out of insecurity, or in the spirit of laziness.
But in anything other than our time together, our friendship has never lacked for anything else. I have always known, in my entire lifetime, that I will never find someone else who will understand me implicitly the way you do.Â
I have known, that I will never build a friendship with anyone again, the way ours works.Â
I have never found anyone who believes in me the way you do. With you, I am better, I want to be better, and with you I’ve always had the security I don’t with other people.Â
In all these years you must have met a thousand other people, people who are less silly, more knowledgeable, more well traveled and mature in thinking. But likewise you have never given up on me, and have always stuck with this silly, reticent girl...someone more likely to tell you about a slightly mortifying personal accident than anything else about my day.Â
You are someone who taught me to say I love you, and mean it. I who have always struggled to say those words with feeling, with you it always means something to say it.Â
When I look back at every rough time in my life, you have always squeezed the time out, no matter how busy you were.Â
You have said once to me, that I taught you things about being friends. But a lot of these things, I learned from being friends with you.Â
Perhaps you remember, and perhaps you don’t. But in the hardest times of high school, when I was the least close with all of you...I didn’t know what to do with myself, and I didn’t know how to make things better. And I was disappointed with how things had turned out to be, but I was also passively waiting, like it should be someone else’s job to fix things for me.Â
And one day I realized, that because you have always known the right things to say, the right things to do, that we always expect everything out of you. That we give you all the pressure to be the absolute best of friends, that we expect you to do everything right. And I realized...that no matter what, we had only had the same length of life to learn all these things. That maybe, all these things we expect you to know and to do, that they’re just as difficult and confusing for you too.Â
I remember writing you a letter, and I spend a long time wondering what to write. In the end, perhaps it was all a mess, and I never said what I wanted to say clearly. I only remember your reply was a bit confused, and I thought maybe I hadn’t been too clear about what I was trying to say.
But it didn’t matter anymore. I had wanted to tell you that I thought I understood. That in a moment of clarity, I had seen that your life had room for someone like me. That if nothing else I could do better than anyone else, I would understand that you were human, that you deserved to have someone love you and coddle you too. I wanted to tell you that I promise to be your best friend for life. That I will always do my best, so that if all the world expects too much from you, that I will always understand, and I will always support you in whichever small ways I can.
In these years, sometimes I have done it, and sometimes I haven’t as much as I want to. But I have never forgotten. All of life seems to be made of these little moments, moments that shape our friendships and our directions, and our course of life.Â
I don’t know what these few years might bring. I imagine, that over there, every day brings new challenges.Â
And even though these days can only be filled with video calls caught at odd times when we’re both in bed at different times of the day, it is as it has always been.Â
I love you, I miss you, and I look forward to the hilarious days we will have ahead.
