An open letter to my dearest and closest confidante,
Sometimes I screw you over. I know this. Usually when I do
it, I’m feeling hurt or angry or more intelligent than you (which I’m not. We
just have different strengths. I need to remind myself of this whenever I’m
feeling particularly inferior or superior, because I clearly don’t do it often
enough yet). And every time that I end up thinking I know better, we both end
up worse off. So I’m gonna try to keep that to a minimum.
I trust you more with my feelings than I trust myself. When
I don’t really know what I’m feeling, I’ll come first to you, because I know
that you understand me and you’ll at least have some ideas for how to help. You
know where I fall short and where I come up, and I think that without you,
somone else would be getting more than their fair share of constant problems
(sorry about that).
When something goes wrong with you, it goes wrong with me
too. I care about you enough that things that upset you will upset me as well.
When people throw around means words carelessly like knives, every slice on
your skin becomes a bruise in my heart. When you’re sad, I get angry; when
you’re angry, I’m angry too. We’ve become too attached to attempt to cut us
apart now; we’d just end up hurting the both of us all the more.
Sometimes I judge you and it hurts you but I ignore the pain
as though with painkillers. But the dull throb of guilt fades back in as time
passes and I have to choose to do something about the hole in my soul. Just the
other day as I read a quote from a feel-good compilation, some words stuck out
at me. “A friend’s job is not to pass judgement but to be there, no matter
what.” I sometimes screw that one up, big time. I need to remember that your
decisions are yours to make. I’m not your leader, I don’t get to choose what
you do and don’t. Even if your choices are bad, they are still your choices and I will respect that you
made them. If things go wrong, it’s not my job to discipline you. Usually there
are natural consequences. I’ll just help you through them. You hopefully won’t
make the same mistake next time.
It’s never been my place to tell you who to be; it’s my
place to be me next to you. We won’t always agree (spoiler alert!) and that’s
okay. It might mean that I don’t help you do something. If it goes well, I’ll
still be happy for you. If it goes horribly, I’ll still support you, even
(especially) if you’re limping. Friends don’t give on friends after 5 years
because they disagreed. Friends give on friends because they stop trying. And
that is one thing I will never do. I will never stop trying.
I’m too passionate about you and the great person you’ve
become to drop it all now. (And we all know how I get when I’m passionate about
something).
So I guess I just wanted to let you know that I know where
my shortcomings are and that I’m still trying my best in this three-legged race
called friendship. I know that if I fall down or decide to stop walking it’ll
all go terribly. I’m trying my best to keep pace with you, wherever that is. We
might’ve started out with only a small ribbon binding us, leaving us easier to
escape but easier to fall, but now we’re fused at the hip and all the way down
to the toenails we painted for each other. It might be harder to stay in sync,
but when we stay in time, we’ll be unstoppable.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is that we’re a team, you
and I. A team that I will passionately support for as long as I possibly can.
--Best wishes,
from me. <3
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