a rambling letter to an ex friend

you weren't perfect either. i don't deny that we hurt you and i don't assume you had intentions to hurt us. we were both fucked up in ways that would never have made us compatible. but you called us a shitty friend, you said we act like a child. your trauma caused you to grow up too fast, i know. but that is not maturity. maybe our trauma caused us not to grow up fast enough. maybe that's not immaturity either. what i know is we're out in the world. we're living our life. it's not your fault that you're not, but i think it is a more definitive marker of maturity. we go to school, hold down a job, manage our money. real world experience.

i don't know where i'm going with this. maybe i'm just trying to make sense of my feelings. maybe i'm trying to turn you into the bad guy. i don't know.

you hurt us, ****. you may not have known you were doing it and you may not have meant to but you did. we never felt secure in our friendship. we've never felt like that around anyone else. we thought you could do no wrong and if there was a problem it was our fault. we felt we had to defer to you, to your judgement. did you mean to exert this influence over us? i really don't think so.

our friendship changed us for better and for worse. we might never get all the traces of you out of our mind. it will probably always be bittersweet to look back on our friendship.

thnks fr th mmrs, ****. we miss you.

if by any chance you see this, i hope life is kinder to you.

-tfb.