To the friends who deserved better

Looking back at my life in high school and college, I sometimes feel like I was a little shit to my friends. Maybe that’s not fair to me, I have always struggled to connect with people and I’ve never had a best friend, really.

I think the title of “best friend” should be a mutual thing and I’ve never had that. But a few weeks ago, someone who used to try to claim that role reached out to try to reconnect while in Austin. I haven’t responded to this person since the friendship fell apart in 2020, but the fact this person keeps trying to reach out leaves me frustrated.

I don’t say anything because engaging just will encourage it. But it also made me think about the friends who I had to leave behind as a teenager when I didn’t know how to handle boundaries or take care of relationships in the same way I do now.

Sure, maybe some of those friendships could be healed over time with care and understanding, but I don’t want to poke the bear. I don’t want to rip open wounds I caused as a kid, a teenager, a young adult.

Though, sometimes I do wonder where my friends from high school went. Some god married, some got married and divorced. Some became local political activists. And I truly just want the world for them all.

Especially as a kid, as a teenager without a fully developed sense of self (or a frontal cortex), I didn’t quite understand holding separate feelings was something I could do. I believed in the concept of black and white, when so many of life is in the gray.

So, to my friends that I haven’t talked to in so long: I’m sorry. You deserved better. Even if we weren’t destined to be friends for all time, I know that there were better ways to end a friendship.

Also know that I am rooting for you. If Facebook suggests we should be friends again, I’ll take a peek, just to see that you’re doing well. I won’t breach that wall I put up between us by adding you or following you. That’s a line I set and I have no right to cross it now.

But I am rooting for you. There is too much hate in the world to hold onto grudges from a decade ago or so. I want people to win, to succeed, however that looks.

While have no reason to believe you’ll ever see this, I hope know I never wanted to be your enemy. I don’t want to be anyone’s enemy. That sounds exhausting. But knowing how much of life is gray, I don’t want to be your enemy, even when I couldn’t be your friend.

We all make choices in life that maybe we look back upon and wish we could have done better. The way I ended friendships in high school and in college is definitely one of those I wish I had known how to handle with better care.

With the age of social media, it feels so hard to even most past moments, like that, too. I don’t feel the need to block people just for existing, but with the easy access, sometimes it’s easy to go down a rabbit hole of “what if.” What if we had stayed friends, would I have been in your weddings, would I have held your hand while your hearts were broken, would I have had someone to call to help me move to Austin.

Being an author is so much of playing the “what if” game for my characters but when it comes to these friendships that I had to end, sometimes I think my imagination goes a little over the top wondering what if. Because friendships that end over a boiling point, even after the dust has settled and it’s hard to hold onto the loneliness that you’re left with. Especially when you’re the one who walked away. Who said you couldn’t handle constant fighting, or your own jealousy, or feeling like you couldn’t express yourself without being nitpicked (“you” is me in this instance).

But when the dust does settle and you grow up, you realize that everyone wishes they could say something to the person they lost just one more time. So maybe this is my way of saying the things I need to say to those friends, without having to ruin whatever peace they have found in this world. Maybe it’s the coward’s way out, I don’t but at the end of the day, I just want

So to the friends who deserved better, I’m sorry, but I hope you are absolutely kicking ass and taking names.