A Letter To My (Ex) Best-Friend

You know we’ve been distant, and a few months back you asked me why. It simply made me laugh. You’ve been distant towards me for a long time, but now that I return the favour you only notice my fault in it. I guess your distance is where it all began.

We’re cousins, only a year apart, and we literally grew up together. Attending high-school together with the same group of friends only made us closer, sisters. But I feel like this was one-sided. I doted on you, I looked up to you, I followed you around, I copied the things that you did and I’m sorry that it annoyed you.

I was very insecure, you knew this and you were a good friend because you listened to my endless problems, my worries, my upsets, my everything basically. I told you it all, I told you too much. But you weren’t always gracious, I could see you get annoyed, see you zone out, see the dazed look in your eyes thinking ‘here she goes again’. But I don’t blame you for that, a person can only put up with so much. So for that I am truly sorry.

But you weren’t all perfect either. There were 3 things you did in high-school which hurt me the most.

The Calm Before The Storm

My manager at work who is more like a friend and co-worker made me cry today. But in a good way.

Whilst discussing my progress she noticed an increase in my confidence levels in comparison to when I first started. I made a slight comment on how my strategy was to ‘fake it until I make it’ on the confidence front. This surprised her and she subtly asked around the issue, managing to get me to open up more and explain more about my insecurities. But even though I couldn’t voice them myself she was able to fill in the blanks and made a few comments that hit the nail on the head.

She asked why I felt so insecure and paranoid around others. Did I feel like they would think I wasn’t good looking, that I talked weird, that I dressed weird, that I wasn’t good enough? All these points hit home and I just felt a tear drop roll down my cheek. Then she started complimenting me, saying I was beautiful, smart, charming, bubbly etc. I stopped her, telling her that such words meant nothing when I just honestly and quite simply didn’t believe them. I told her how I felt like people just said that to me to be nice. But the fact that she could see through me just opened me up and had the hurt spilling over. I cried some more and she did the sweetest thing ever. She hugged me and kissed my hair and was just there for me.

21st Century Truth

I spend hours looking through Blogs, Tumblr, Twitter, Pinterest, and Facebook. What I find so intriguing is that everyone feels so at ease in revealing their inner most desires and opening up to the world, but we are unable to uphold this truth in real life.

The majority of us desire, want and crave the same things from life. Yet we can’t seem to communicate this face-to-face. We skirt around the issue with our friends and family, perhaps afraid of their reaction. Most of us may spend hours with our friends gossiping about superficial things but then go home and reveal our true inner-selves behind the safety of a computer screen.

I really feel there are many individuals who I follow on Tumblr, Twitter and via Blogs, that I could connect with. That I could be best friends with because their posts speak to me. We seem to be in the same point in our lives. We want the same things. But some, if not most, of these individuals do not act like that in the real world (myself included). The internet and social networks allow us to emphasize, magnify and intensify everything. So something good, will look amazing and perfect – after being sugarcoated and perhaps modified a little to make it sound or look better. Something bad will look worse – after being taken out of context because the individual was angry at the time of posting it.