Nobody puts baillee in the corner

I’ve been scolded in the past for writing letters and not saying things in person, but that’s just how I work best. I have mild ADD. I have problems with showing my feelings. My anxiety decides to make a re-occurring sitcom cameo appearance. I’m sorry, but this is the way I choose to express myself. If you can’t handle the text, stay out of the blog.

I’ve been going back and forth on whether or not to write this. I wrote “BFFs..Until We’re Not” a while ago, but I can’t make myself shake how this particular friendship ended. I’ve been working on my projects a lot, so I came to a conclusion: If I was going to make people be vulnerable, I needed to be vulnerable with them. If you’ve read my stuff before, you know I have no problem discussing the intimate issues of my life without hesitation, so for this to bother me, you know it’s a big deal. I’ve thought about sending this as a text message or a letter (somehow), but nothing felt quite right. So, I procrastinated (shocker) writing this for weeks. Today is finally the day.

This post has been a long time coming. I had a friend I cared deeply about brutally ghost me. As in, if you now read A Christmas Carol, I am the fourth ghost who visits Scrooge right before dawn and asks if he wants to go get coffee. The Ghost of Cappuccinos at Any Given Time, if you will. It was rough. It happened a little less than a year ago, but I like I said, I can’t let it go. I’ll probably never find out what exactly happened, and that’s cool. I just need some form of closure, and I’m hoping this blog post will help.

Hey stranger,

I know you’ll probably never see this, let alone read it, and I can accept that. I want to start off by apologizing. Looking back, I was really emotionally needy for the bulk of our friendship. I was about to be thrown into the real world. I started drinking. I got my first apartment. I had my first job. I hated my first job. I went full time at my second job. I bounced back and forth between being financially stable and having to borrow money from people. I was a lot to handle. I often unpacked my baggage on you, and I should have reciprocated more. I tried really hard, like that one Halloween when we sat in my room and talked about everything in our lives while the party outside provided the perfect soundtrack. We were both really drunk and almost crying, but I love that memory because it’s so genuine.

I’ve had a lot of friends come and go over the years, some with regret, some without. Our friendship belongs in a different category for me. It’s rare to meet someone now and think our friendship could really go the distance, and I thought ours could. There was never a dull moment, and I legitimately felt like I could tell you anything without judgment or consequence. You helped me get over a boy I never thought I could and now feel ridiculous for spending any time dwelling on. You routed for me at graduation. You were one of the firsts to hear about all of the major things I was struggling with. I felt like you really understood me.

Honestly, all flair for the dramatics aside, I felt abandoned when you left. You were gone without a trace. I remember the last night I saw you. I thought everything was fine. I thought I’d see you again in a week or two. I’m damn lucky to see my friends as frequently as I do (especially with all of us slowly entering adulthood), so I definitely understood if you were busy. So I waited. I waited for weeks for a text that never came. So, I decided to text you. I asked if you wanted to go to dinner soon because I missed you. The only thing I got back was the “delivered” text stamp.

I want to tell you how much I’ve grown. I want to tell you how much I’ve changed (I even  have bangs now, and I definitely think you’d approve). I want to show you all of the amazing things I’ve been doing. Maybe that’s why our friendship had to end. Maybe I was too dependent on you. Regardless, you broke my heart. You shattered it pieces, and I still haven’t found all the shards. You left me at my most fragile, and a little, tiny part of me can’t help but hate you for it. The downside is there’s still too much of me that loves you for it to matter.

I wish you would have called me a selfish bitch. I wish you would have told me that you couldn’t take me needing you. I wish you would have told me you were only friends with me because you felt sorry for me. I wish you would have told me anything.

Now, here I am, still trying to figure out what I did wrong and why you aren’t here. You are definitely one of my all-time favorite people, and I really thought you would always be here, even if it was in the background at times. I thought you would be one of the first people to meet my significant other when I found them. I thought we’d have a lot more crazy adventures. I thought there would be more time. But I guess not. Maybe I misread everything. Maybe our friendship wasn’t what I thought.

I don’t want to end on bad note though. We had some great times, and I still smile when I think about them, like when you came with me to get Petunia, all those countless nights at Rocky Horror, all the times we skipped class to go shopping, all of the jokes about Hilary Duff using Comic Sans in A Cinderella Story, and all of the times we drove around listening to Bangerz. Thank you for that.

We’ll always have Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion.