Dear You,

I look at you and a million memories flash through my mind. A million hates, a million wants, a million smiles, a million tears. You, as I believe I once worded and can apparently still bring myself to word as so, were my one in a million. What does that even mean? Well, if you want the truth, I honestly have no idea.

I guess it means you were my one guy. Not in general, but in this school, in this part of my life. A part of me always knew it. Actually, I think all of me always knew it. I knew it the first day I looked into your eyes that you would change my life, that you would be the reason I would like Saugerties, that you would be my connection to this town in ways I would never understand.

It feels like, if I really think back to my first day in Saugerties, I can actually remember scoping the room out and having my eyes land on you. I feel like I can literally recall the very moment that I saw you and those amazing blue eyes, that I looked into them and my mind eased for just a fraction of a second as I enjoyed what I found in them. Was it hope? Was it understanding? Was it compassion? Does the moment I can recall even exist at all? There's so much I feel that I don't know anymore. So much. Far too much.

I think back on our friendship now, and I just feel sadness. These days I can no longer bring myself to smile or ask questions. It seems there are no more "what if's" left inside of me, there are no more "could have been" daydreams, there are no more "I wish I could go back and.." thoughts consuming my mind - there are only tears.

When something is broken, it's been said you shouldn't try to fix it. Why? It's like a mirror - if you try to fix it, you'll only end up hurt. I guess the problem here is that I didn't realize our friendship was broken. Bent a bit, yes. Crumpled and frayed at the ends, absolutely. But "broken" was never a word that had come into my mind when I thought of you and our friendship.

I thought of you and I thought of laughter. I thought of you and I thought of best friends. I thought of you and I thought of intense crushes. I thought of you and I thought of insane jealousy. I thought of you and I thought of never-ending smiles. I thought of you and I thought of the Titanic. I thought of you and I thought of my first kiss. I thought of you and I thought of life as I once knew it. But, never once, did I look at you and think it was the end for us. That the last fight or the last misunderstanding or the last huge thing to happen in our lives would break us apart. Now… Now I'm not so sure.

It seems so repetitive, everything I have to say to you. I doubt you'd be surprised to know it's about twenty times worse in my mind though, just an endless cycle of thoughts as I fight to get this off of my mind but I lose the fight pathetically. It seems like it should be simple, am I right? This isn't the first time I've lost you.

But, let's get real here. This is the first time I've lost you for real. This is the end, whether we can salvage it or not. Even if we can save it, save our friendship, it'll never be whole again. We'll never truly be friends again. We'll never be able to look at each other without feeling the immense hurt of the past, of our actions, of words spoken and unspoken.

I know it's not easy for you to look at me, to speak to me, to even hear my name right now. I've hurt you and I'm well aware of that. But, what I don't think you realize is that you've hurt me in return. It seems that you think it was easy for me to say the things I said when we stood under the stars that night.. And it wasn't. It was probably one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. But it was what I needed, what we needed, what life needed from us.

Maybe there was once a time where we could have worked out - where I could have been yours and you could have been mine and that's all that would have mattered to our worlds as they combined as one. But fear, selfishness, petty excuses, mere stupidity.. They ruined it. With our help, of course.

Maybe, though, nothing was ruined. Maybe it's our thought process of the whole thing. Maybe it's the fact that we regret what didn't happen so strongly at times that we've ruined any chance of having anything at all. Together we've torn apart our friendship, stained the memories with tears and sadness, ripped the future right out from under us and set it on fire. All at once, it seems we both decided that if we couldn't have love, we couldn't have anything at all.

The only problem is, that wasn't a conscious decision. That was a decision made out of hurt and anger and broken hopes. It wasn't a decision we both made knowingly, not that night and not ever. But we both made it. We're both, in all honesty, very selfish people when it comes to each other. When we get lost inside of our own world, nothing else matters. We've proved that almost far too many times. But, this time, we got lost inside of our own world and one of us was strong enough to admit that we had to find our way back.

If there's one thing I regret, though, it's that we got severely lost on the way back to reality. If I had known that night was going to be the last night of friendship, the last night to speak what was on my mind, the last night to cry or scream or laugh or smile with and because of you, I never would have let that night end.

See, I don't know how it is in your mind. But when you drove away that night, I didn't just lose my "what if's" and my "could have been's" and all of the other things that floated in the back of my mind. No.. I lost my best friend. And I lost him for good this time. I lost the guy that would read my poetry and tickle me when I was sad. The guy that would get jealous when I talked about other guys and play Mr. Protective. The guy that would ride his bike five or so miles to my house just to give me a hug. The guy that could read my mind without me even having to say anything. The guy that could always make me laugh, no matter how far away my ability to do so seemed to be.


When you pulled away that night, I think you only lost your possibility that never really went away, your side girl that you'd always have questions about but would never get answers to.

But me? I lost my best friend. I lost my whole reason for fighting through the struggle, my reason for falling in a secret love with this town, my reason for looking back on some of the hardest days of my life and still being able to smile. I lost my rock. And, this time? I know I'm not getting him back. And you have no idea, not a single clue, how badly that hurts me. It's not just our friendship that's been shattered; I've been shattered right along with it.










-Me