Unsent Letter

  

 Do you ever get stuck on “why?” Do you ever want answers that no one is able to provide? Do you search for closure when none is available? I have and I do. I don’t like leaving things with a giant question mark hanging over them. I often worry more about why something happened, than worrying about what happened. I have often been told this is a girl thing. Girls are the ones always seeking closure. Girls are the ones dissecting everything until they can understand every little piece of it. Girls are the ones who can’t move on until they understand exactly what they are moving on from. Well I guess that’s true. That’s me, I am that girl. I am the one who can’t move past a situation that is no longer relevant in my life. I am the person who can’t move on from something that happened 10 years ago, and has absolutely no bearing on anything going on in my life today. It’s not important. It doesn’t matter. Except it does! What I once looked back on with fondness and happiness, I now look back on and all I see is a question mark. How can two people who once were so close now just be a shadow in each other’s lives? How can a friendship so strong and powerful end and neither person no why? How can you walk away from the person you relied on, the person who understood you, the person who would do anything to keep you from harm? I don’t know how, but I did, and so did you. How does that even happen? How can a simple conversation, and a question asked, have this much impact on a friendship that was like no other? I don’t understand. I never have. Do you? Do you have the answers I have spent years searching for?  Have you put all of the pieces of the puzzle together? Do you hold the missing pieces to the puzzle I could never solve? It hurts to think about. There are days I feel guilty because I wish you were never a part of my life. It’s not a fair view on things, and I hate feeling that way. Those days are few and far between, but they are still there. I thought our friendship was special. When I look back on it I know it was a friendship that mattered. It made a difference in both of our lives. Even at the time I knew it was a friendship others were and should be jealous of. It was the type of friendship everyone deserves to have, but few actually do. It was a friendship that was pure and honest. It served a purpose and it mattered. As I sit here today I want to feel those same things about it. I want to know that those things were true, but then I look at how it ended and it makes me question it all. How can a friendship like that end how it did? Was it not that type of friendship after-all? Was I caught up in the moment and seeing something that wasn’t really there? Maybe, but I don’t think so. It can’t have been fake. I couldn’t have sat with you while you cried, and poured your heart out about the pain you were feeling. I couldn’t have been the one you came to, the one person you opened up to. You couldn’t have been the one who stayed up with me all night when I was sick; the one who held my hair back while I puked or the one who brought me crackers to make it all better. The one who shared a pillow with me in the back seat of a car because I was sick and you didn’t want me back there alone. Those things can’t have happened if the reality was that it wasn’t the type of friendship I thought it was. Those are the things that made me know it was EXACTLY the type of friendship I thought it was. But then if that’s true, how did it all go away? How was that the reality one day and the next day it was all gone? How did it disappear into thin air? If that’s the friendship we had, and the foundation it was built on how can me asking one simple question make it all change? You know that it was innocent; a hypothetical question asked in the middle of a friendly conversation. A conversation we were coming at from opposite views. A conversation about something we were both questioning, and yet possibly still hoping to believe in. How was that conversation between two people, taken out of context and then shared among others? How is that conversation something that you dwelled on, pondered, and worried about for weeks; and more importantly how are all those things true and everyone else knew it, but not me? Why didn’t you come to me? Why didn’t you ask me your questions and tell me your fears? I was the one person who could have held the answers; the person who could have provided the missing piece, but I am the one person you didn’t turn to. After months of being the only one you did turn to, why when it mattered, did you turn away?

   These are my questions. These are the things I want answers to. This is the letter I should be writing to you, but it’s the letter you will never see. You’ve had chances to provide the answers, and I’ve had chances to ask the questions, but I can’t. There can’t be an answer. It’s a problem with no solution. I often wonder if you have these same questions. If you feel like I turned away from you, the way I feel you turned away from me. Do you look back on it and wonder how it could have happened? Do you question how such an amazing friendship developed so quickly, and faded away just as fast? Do you ever wonder if I am holding the missing piece to your puzzle? I don’t know. Part of me hopes you do, and another part of me knows I wouldn’t want you to ever feel that way. You don’t deserve to feel pain. You don’t deserve to have things left as question marks. But if you aren’t wondering, does it mean it wasn’t really there at all? Is it something only I saw; a figment of my imagination? I know it’s not. It can’t be. I’ve seen the pictures. I’ve read the notes. I know it happened, and now I know it’s gone.  

   I’ve been told guys don’t need closure on things. Closure is a girl thing. Maybe that’s true. Maybe that’s how you can move on and leave the unanswered questions. Maybe that’s how you could just walk away. Maybe, maybe, maybe…. But if that’s true, how could  you walk up to me months later, with one of my favorite drinks in your hand, and hand it to me as you stared straight into my eyes, and asked “We’re okay right?” It’s a memory burned into my brain. It’s the thing I think of every time I grab a blue Gatorade. It’s the question in my head when our friends say your name, and it’s the one bit of hope I have left. The piece that makes me think, you knew it was special too. Months later and at different places in our lives you still wanted to know if I was okay, wanted to know if we were okay, and as I looked back into your eyes I saw the sincerity there. I saw the anguish, and all the question marks. I saw the hope that it would all be different. The optimism that it could all go back, but it couldn’t. We were too far gone. We had let it hurt us, and we could never go back. Our friendship was no longer a perfect flower. It wasn’t on a pedestal and protected by a bubble. People had popped our bubble of protection, and we let them. We let them get inside our heads, and we let them convince us that walking away was what was best. Walking away was what would protect the other person. Walking away was what we had to do. People didn’t understand our friendship. They didn’t understand how we could be so close and be “just friends.” They didn’t understand why our friendship was so innocent, and they didn’t get how we could rely so much on each other. There had to be more there right? That’s what they wanted to know. They wouldn’t believe that what they saw was what they got. We were just friends, and never thought of it any other way. It was the perfect friendship, one that so few have, and because of that they couldn’t understand. They got inside our heads, they made us question things we had never questioned before, and they convinced us walking away was what we had to do. It was best for everyone. I walked away because I thought it was what I had to do, to keep you from pain. It was what I had to do to keep you inside your safety bubble, and allow your life to flourish. It’s what I had to do. Except it wasn’t! It didn’t keep you safe from pain. It didn’t keep you on the perfect pedestal I placed you on. It didn’t allow your life to flourish and move to a place it never could have gone with me in it. It didn’t do any of those things. Do you know what it did? It left you, the same way it left me. It left you with question marks. It left you confused, and as I looked in your eyes that day I saw pain. A pain I had never seen before. I have seen you cry, and I have comforted you as things ripped you apart. I was there for you when you suffered through so many things, but this was different. This wasn’t a pain I was helping you get through. This wasn’t a pain that I was trying to shield you from. This was a pain I caused. A pain that came because I wasn’t strong enough, a pain I thought I was protecting you from when I walked away. A pain I didn’t understand. It was a pain I recognized, because I know as I looked in your eyes and I saw the pain, you looked in my eyes and you saw the same thing.

   I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to fix the situation. I am not looking for you to walk back into my life. I am not at the place anymore. I am not the same person. I have moved on. I have found happiness. I have found love. I have allowed my life to flourish, and I have walked away. It isn’t something that impacts my life anymore. It’s not something that holds me back. It’s not something I am looking back on, and wanting to change. All I want to do is erase the question mark hanging above it all. I want to know why. I want to answer all your questions, and I want you to answer mine, but I know we can’t. Deep down inside I know… I know it’s a question with no answers, a problem without a solution. So with that knowledge I try to seek peace. I try to look back on our friendship for what it was. I try to look back with fondness. I know I don’t really wish you had never been there. I wouldn’t erase it if I could. It was an experience that helped me grow. It was the kind of friendship everyone should have, and now it’s gone. It’s gone and no one knows why. I guess someday I’ll be okay with that, and for now I am just happy the questions come less frequently. They seldom occupy my mind.

   Someone asked me once if I was angry with you, and I can honestly say I’m not. I wasn’t then, and I’m not now. It’s a thought that brings sadness, but never anger. If there is any anger it is at myself for allowing people to get inside our heads. For being stupid enough to think other people would know what’s better for us, more than we would know ourselves. There is sadness in knowing you have gone through some horribly hard times since then, and I couldn’t be there to provide comfort or offer support. I am not that person for you anymore, and I won’t ever be again. There is sadness in wondering if you question if I would still be there for you if you needed me. Please know that I still think of you. I still know days that will be hard for you, and although you occasionally get those emails saying, "just so you know I am thinking of you today, and praying you are holding up okay," those are only a fraction of the times I have thought of you and prayed for you to have happiness and peace. You have gone through things I never imagined possible, and I have heard you have gotten through them okay. You are strong. I always knew you were. I hope you have held up okay through it all, and I hope you know if you ever called I would answer. We aren’t the same people anymore, we can’t be those people for each other, and that’s okay, but I would always be there if you needed me, and from afar I still pray for you to have a safety bubble around you, for no one to cause you harm, and for your life to flourish and be everything you hoped for. You will always remain on a pedestal to me, but now I know you aren’t that perfect flower. You have been beaten and bruised, we both have, and because of that I will always look back at that time and our friendship fondly. Remember and admire the innocence, the honesty, and the protectiveness placed over each other. When I think of our friendship I will try to focus more on the time our friendship was the perfect flower, placed on a perfect pedestal, inside a safety bubble, and think less about the day the bubble popped.