So I am just going to write about this now and be done with it. I wasn't going to, but I know I should, for myself, so I'll just be really thorough and move on...

My best friend throughout high school was Kelsie. And basically we were always really close... we did 3 years of Key Club volunteering with eachother, travelled to Europe together one summer and New York the next, obviously the movies, concerts, sleepovers, typical best friend stuff too. We never fought, ever, until the later part of senior year when she started kinda drifting away and not treating me so well anymore, at the same time that I was also dealing with being hurt by some of our other friends who she was getting even closer to... and therefore not really being there for me anymore. She started leaving me out of things, lied to me about her and our other friends, etc. But while I wanted to separate the crap I was going thru with the other girls and the (smaller) problems w/ her, I think she just got tired of it all and decided to cut me out of her life in general.

So when I signed her yearbook I basically was just really hurt & emotional & couldn't fake it... so I wrote what I really felt, and it wasn't mean at all. Actually I think it was pretty flattering, but I don't remember it very well anyway.

After graduation I called her a couple times... it wasn't like we hated eachother or were fighting, I thought it was just something we had to get through, so I left a couple messages that she didn't really return. Then she sent me a birthday card, so I called her to say thank you and we talked (superficial stuff) for awhile and she told me she'd call the next day so we could plan on going out to lunch or something. Never happened, two months pass with no contact, but she was also on vacation for all of August, so.

Anyway, I've been cleaning out my room & coming across all these pictures of us together, and a bunch of things I had saved for this scrapbook I was going to make of us & give her on her 18th birthday (never happened, bad timing ha) - and I just realized that I really missed her. She was the best friend I ever had, we had so much fun together, it seemed so high school that we would never speak again, right? So I was just thinking, okay, maybe this is just a rocky patch of our friendship that can make us stronger - she means more to me than to just give up on it completely like that.

So I get on AIM last night and see that she's online... start getting really, really nervous but figure I have to do it or I'll always wonder/regret it. So I say hi, she starts being really distant and like "how was your summer?" when we haven't spoken for two months, hello. Finally I'm just like, this is retarded, what are you doing, can we talk about something real? And basically she just told me that she wasn't planning on talking to me again like, ever. She had pretty much been creating this time & distance between us so that she could get "closure" on our friendship and just remember the good times we had. She wants me to just be a memory in her life. She doesn't want to see me, talk to me, keep in touch with me, be a part of my life anymore. Not because she's mad at me for anything, just because she wants "closure." She appologized for hurting me. She said that she feels guilty, but she hasn't really thought about me at all since graduation. She just wants me to be "completely happy."

Okay, first of all, fuck her. That's not how you treat friends, especially ones that you screwed over, not the other way around. Second of all, she seems to think I've just been sitting here all summer miserable about not being her best friend anymore, when that's not really the case. We had a great, solid friendship for years. I'm a really loyal person who actually cares about her friends, and I've grown up, changed, everything so much since graduation. Anyway, I told her she was making it really easy to say goodbye (because if this is how she treats her friends now, then I'm not really interested anymore) and that I think she's making a mistake (by burning bridges and walking away from an awesome friend like me, ha), but thanks for the nice memories and good luck with everything anyway.

It's not that I wanted to suddenly be best friends with her again. I just wanted to feel like I could call on her birthday or see her at Christmas and not have that be weird. This is how you treat people who have been there for you, cared about you, for 4 years. You don't hurt them and run away.

She was talking about starting this new chapter of her life and wanting to leave this part of it (me) behind... after hearing all of this from her I absolutely wanted to leave her there too, I mean this was not the girl I intended to continue a friendship with, but I didn't know that this was who she had become when I brought it up, obviously. But I don't believe that you have to break away to move forward. My past made me who I am today, but I am not my senior year of high school. There are people from that part of my life, however hard and painful it was, that I love and care about and want to keep in my life forever... I thought she was one of them, but she proved to me otherwise.

That wasn't the girl I loved. She's not the one who I stole cupcakes with at an Elementary school carnival sophomore year. She's not the one I saw Paris with for the first time. She is not the girl whose hair I permed unsuccessfully in my bathroom sink and who I bought purses and lemonade off the streets of New York City with... but she was. I can look at those pictures and memories and be happy with them, feel complete. She was a great best friend. I don't hate her, she will always be a part of my heart. I don't feel regret or bitterness or anger towards her anymore... I think it's unfortunate that she decided to miss out on continuing a great friendship like ours, but it was her decision.

I know I did everything I could, and I will never have any regrets about it. I know I am a better person for having known her and an even better person for having gone through everything I did and to have been able to learn and grow and be mature enough to be honest with her and offer to try and restore something she had already thrown away. I'm proud of myself for that. And for having shed the last tears I have left for her last night. Now I can only smile. And I will.