Dear Ex-Friend 

 I've spent half a life time pondering what I did to make you hate me so much. I've cried tears that have turned into long-lost memories, and tears that burned into my skin, because all I could do was think about how much I hated what you did to me. When you were here, life was ethereal, bound by the elasticity of the joy pounding in my veins whenever I just got to see you, no matter if it was for a minute or a day. There were nights when I woke up, terrified that anyone I met would turn out like you, an angel with a devil's soul. Your face was sketched onto everything I saw, people, builidings, lights, I couldn't get you out of my mind. I still remember the day you knocked on my door and told me you were moving.

 I didn't say I would miss you, but I looked down and hoped that you would see the pain in my body language and the way my eyes brimmed with agony. You weren't the first friend to tell me that you were moving away, but you were the first friend that I fell in love with. I'd like to deny it, but it's impossible to deny the truth. It always shows itself in time. I thought if I didn't go outside, I wouldn't have to see all the places we used to go to everyday, but those places were in my heart and so were you. When people say your name, it's like I can see this vision of this little girl screaming in my mind, she is stuck in this never-ending wilderness, with no one to help her even as she screams out in pain, because the poison in her heart is spreading throughout her body, and she can't handle it. She is helpless. She is who I see when people say your name, because missing you is like poison, because it's not that I did anything wrong, it's just that you thought I was never good enough for you. Everything we had was a lie. You never truly cared enough to stay.

 You never visited when you moved, and when I asked you to visit, you said only if I promised not to be annoying. You still didn't show up, ever. Everyday I woke up after you moved, I would get up, excited at the chance to see you, and then realized I would never see you again, and that killed me more than anything. Living without you is like someone took my heart and drilled a boulder-sized hole into it, and sent me off to fix it on my own. No one can fill up the gap. I've tried everything. I keep busy with schoolwork, but I can't keep relationships, I push people away so often now, I don't know how to let them all the way in. Everytime they get close to knowing me as much as you did, I get scared and push them just far enough to keep them on the sidelines until I can play it off fine. You've made new friends, but will they ever really know you like I know you? Like how you like your bagels plain, and that you're dad is an awful, abusive person, and that you like watermelon gum, Swedish fish, plays, and religious things. Or that your mother does hair for one of her jobs, or that you have a YouTube account where you sing and sing, do they truly know who you are? Have they seen you at your darkest times? Do they know how you pushed me away when I was someone who would've loved you and took care of you forever if you asked? Probably not, you tend to write me off as a clingy, stupid, naive girl, and I used to believe every word you said. Goodbye old friend.

The girl that loved you, 

Marissa Bell