REGRET-CELLOPHANE-SUPERCUT, a letter to my ex-best friend
Dear ___,
are you okay without me? i hope you’re okay without me, i hope you’re miserable, i hope you miss me, i don’t care if you do, yes i do but no i don’t and—
You hated me, I think. I always suspected so, kept the knowledge of your disdain in my gut like a cancerous growth, and it’s only now as I autopsy our friendship that I see the extent of the damage, everything rotted and burned through by all the acid I’ve been swallowing for the past two years. Here is the tongue, shriveled away to nothing, atrophied from your gag orders—don’t talk to your other friend about me, only tell me the truth about myself when I’m in the mood for it, only criticize me for how I make you feel when I feel like hearing it—and the heart, sore and sick and blackened with resentment. Next we have the liver, full of backed-up bile. Remember when we were on that three-person friend hangout and you snuck away to fuck your new fuck buddy while I lay on the couch, teary-eyed and angry, for a whole hour and a half? Remember when I confronted you about it, about how small and forgotten and disrespected you made me feel, and you told me I wasn’t ‘harmed’ and that I should get over it, that I was throwing a lot at you, and could I please work on my tone when trying to express my sadness-anger and thank you for apologizing for ruining your mood with my hurt feelings? Remember when months later you asked me if I was in love with you or something because your Fuck Buddy insisted that was the only reason I’d have such a reaction?
Let’s crack open the skull now, see the brain riddled with holes and melting from the patronizing, the demeaning and diminishing, the belittling, from all the times you’ve treated me like a joke and mocked my feelings, my intelligence, for all the times you’ve mistaken my kindness for stupidity or for weakness, for naivete.
Even as I write this, memories of meanness come back to me. I see now, how I was a dog to you, something to kick and laugh at when the people you fawned over kicked and laughed at you. Even now, I worry, I censor myself because what if you read this and it makes you angry, what if it hurts you, what if what if? I was always wrongfooted with you, always desperate to please and appease. Any mistake I made, no matter how small, was cause for ridicule. Come look, you said! Come see my stupid little pet, my jester, my bestie!
I can’t believe it was all malice all the time, and I think knowing that you didn’t mean half the things you said makes it all the worse. You treated me the way you did because you didn’t care, because I didn’t matter, because I didn’t count. I was your best friend, your rock, your sister, the one person you could call at 1am, and yet I was nothing to you. What I gave, it never occured to you to give back. I asked you, in my final voice note to you, voice cracking, chest straining with the need to cry, what was it about me that made you so apathetic to me? I told you that you were kind and giving, that I’d seen you extend this kindness to others, but not to me, never to me.
And don’t imagine for a moment that I’m a transactional person. You know my heart, and you know that every kindness, every favor, every Venmo or Zelle (for gas money, for concert tickets, for dinner, for the weed I spilled that you mocked me about even at my birthday lunch where I paid for both your meal and mine), every dinner you shared with my family, every time you took over my twin bed to sleep off a hard day, every night I rode along with you as you did deliveries so you wouldn’t be so alone, every card for your birthday, for christmas, just because I knew you were feeling blue)—I expected nothing back. I don’t give to get, I don’t love to be loved and yet—
(When was the last time you got me a birthday present? A card? When did you last pay something for me, bought tickets or a meal for me, offered a shoulder for me to cry on? When have you ever gone out of your way for me the way I went out of my way for you? Am I not worth it? Was I so little to you that you couldn’t call when I was sick?)
I don’t know. I think I’m writing this to try to get some of this pressure from off my chest, to say to you what I’ll never be able to say in real life. I doubt we’ll ever speak again, you and I, because you won’t think to call or text, and I won’t call or text because I’m learning to let go of what hurts me.
But I do miss you. With my whole entire being, I miss you. Yesterday, I learned the definition of the word saudade, and I curled into myself on my bed and wailed because I knew I could never have it again. Even if you changed, even if somehow we could overcome this break, there would always be a germ of rot at the center of it. All those nights of speeding through Atlanta blasting music, all those times laying in my room watching movies and just talking, of being a part of an us, they still exist, but only as memories painted blue. My dear best friend, I will spend the entirety of my life mourning this. It wil come to me in five years, in ten years, when I’m old, and I don’t think I’m sorry for it. What we had was beautiful, special, and I learned from you what not to accept and what I deserve.
You hated me, I think, but I think of you all the time. Twice a day, I wonder if you’re okay, if you’ve eaten today, if you’ve gotten your car fixed yet. I wonder if somebody is looking out for you, if you managed to take your bed down yet, or if you’ve folded your laundry. Are you well? Are you happy? Are you—
Anyways. You were on my mind.
Best sorry goodbye i miss you i love you
this is sooooooooooooooooooooo real.