You are one of the most annoying and insufferable people I have ever met in my entire life. When I first met you, I hated you. Nobody got on my nerves like you did. You were the most pompous, boastful, big-headed, arrogant, callous, and patronizing individual I had ever met. Yet somehow, despite my occasionally overwhelmingly negative opinions of you, you became the centre of my world. For a time. You have been, simultaneously and contradictorily, one of my best friends and my worst enemies. Maybe that’s what made our relationship so interesting to me, and why it has been something I’ve ruminated on periodically over the years. There was always a delicate duality of our relationship with respect to the careful balance between the respect I had for you, and the utter abhorrence I had towards your more egotistical nature. I suppose it was because there was always a duality with you as well – the occasionally soft, grounded, sensitive individual, and the more frequently arrogant, haughty, and supercilious projection of yourself that you showed the general public. The former was enough to help me ignore the latter.. which perhaps I enjoyed as well. You thought so highly of yourself that I could not help but feel valuable too – that such a person who thought so highly of themselves would choose me to be their partner and romantic associate. Value by association, I suppose. Of course, we were also teenagers at the time, so it very well may have been that I was the only girl that could stand to be around you. That is maybe not a great compliment to myself, after all.

You were always there to correct me. To push me. Your quick wit and your insufferable banter. You were the first person I had ever met who challenged me intellectually. I hated you because of it. Or I thought I did. I suppose it benefitted us… myself especially, as it pushed me to be better out of pure spite alone… a drive to put you in your place after all those attempts at one-upping me. Sometimes even physically, as I was stronger than you at the time, and when I could not best you intellectually, at least I could resort to a more basal method of exerting power. Looking back, not just to our youth but also more recently in our period of reconnection, you and I were perpetually locked in a mental game of intellectual tennis. To this day, you are, and were, one of, if not the, most aggravating people I have ever met. I still cannot entirely discern if I actually like you, or if I just respect your audacity. I think this is a question I will probably struggle with until my last breath.

Somehow, quite bizarrely, I realized that I had actually grown to love you. I loved your challenges, your banter. You met me on a level that nobody else had before. We were true, eye-to-eye equals. I think you recognized that too, although your ego and bravado would never allow you to admit it. You told me once that, whether I liked it or not, our paths were tied by fate. I thought it was cheesy at the time, but I still have a picture of that message in my phone. I don’t think I’ll ever delete it. I have saved it right next to the one where you called me an idiot… That duality of yours never ceased, or ceases, to amaze me.

After we broke up, and even before, our friends told me that I made you a better person – more digestible, more tolerable. More human. Sometimes, I agreed with them, but mostly I was sad that they did not see you how I did. Not as the posturing Tony Stark-esque personality that you often portrayed in front of others, but rather the softer and kinder person that I had come to know, and to love. Your banter was endearing to me. We were so similar in so many ways. I always felt honoured and respected by you. You were always a gentleman. I respected your loud confidence and your witty humour and your endless pursuit for knowledge. I was disappointed when I learned that you had not capitalized on your potential to its fullest extent. Maybe you felt the same for me, but I’m rectifying that now, partially because of you. Your relentless pursuits, your vision, your goals… inadvertently, you inspire me to want more for myself as well – in whatever capacity I am capable of achieving it. You were always my biggest supporter, and I will always return the favour. We are forever friends and allies. You solidified that for me when, for my birthday, you introduced me to the greatest game alive, which I have not yet been able to play without thinking of you. Minecraft aside, you also solidified your place in my life in the ways that you showed up for me after my dad died. You will always sit on a clean, polished pedestal in the hallways of loves in the museum of my life. You’ve earned that spot. Even as we drift apart and fade into the background of each others memories again, I hope you know that you will always be special to me and I will always have respect and admiration for you. You were the last boyfriend he ever met. That means something to me.

I was shocked when you reached out to me a couple of years ago… late at night, and drunk, no less. You always made me believe in the spiritual timing of things. A few weeks prior, I had heard a song on the radio that reminded me of you. A jazz song. I never liked jazz, but for whatever reason it stuck out to me when I was scrolling through the radio stations in my car on the way to work, and I couldn’t bring myself to switch it. Koop Island Blues instantly reminded me of you and brought me back to our years together. Of course, I had thought about you from time to time since we parted, but this song jarringly returned those memories to me. For whatever reason, the song went on repeat. It played over and over again, for days, leading into weeks. I like to imagine that you could hear it, somehow. Bizarrely, on the night you reached out to me, at the time you reached out to me, I was listening to a song called Drunk Text Me… and you did. Well past midnight, I’d been pacing, listening to new music, thinking… and you broke that bubble. I truly questioned the probabilities of the existence of manifestation that day. Ten years since we spoke, and your name was on my phone. It’s first appearance since we were kids. I never thought I’d see the day.

We’d always spoken to each other through music. That was our shared language. The timing, the “signs” from the universe… the jazz song on the radio, the late night, clearly drunk message from you during a song about getting a drunk text.. you asking how I am, wondering how I was doing, hoping I was happy… you wanted to meet up, to see me. We did. You picked me up at my work and we walked to what is now one of my favourite diners – but that is not credit to you, just for the record. You told me I hadn’t changed, but that it was obvious that I was a woman now. I commented on your moustache and complimented your outfit. You always knew how to clean up well. We reminisced, talked, and bantered. You teased, you challenged me, you were kind. You drove me to the train station. When I was waiting for the train, you sent me a song. Told me that, no word of a lie, it just came on in the car when you pressed shuffle on your liked songs. It was Hello. You told me that When We Were Young came on next. You said it was meant to be. I didn’t tell you about Koop Island Blues or Drunk Text Me. You said that we were meant to meet again. We were also 25 at the time, which was coincidentally the same name of that Adele album. We agreed it was a strange coincidence. I listened to that album for the entire ride home.

I began to listen to Bad Idea Right? and I thought of how badly I wanted to tell T that we were talking again. I wondered often what T would think or say. We spoke nearly every day since, reconnecting. It felt like we slipped back into that same old routine of banter and tennis and games. You sent me All My Love. You sent me Stick Season. I’m sure I sent you songs too, but I can’t remember. I’m not sure that I’d ever told you about Koop Island Blues. We went on walks. A lot of walks. We talked about everything and nothing. You gave me a tour of the house you bought. It suits you. You’re really grown up, now. In a lot of ways more grown than I am. You inspire me to want to be better than I am. I hope that I can be better one day, and that you’ll be as proud of me as I am of you – even if you didn’t go on to be the doctor everyone thought you would. Maybe it took more courage for you to follow your passions instead of other people’s expectations. Maybe I can – and should – learn from that. I think I will try, at the very least.

I’m happy that we got to spend so much time together. I’m especially happy for our talk-walks, which were always insightful and kept me grounded. I’m happy we talked about our friendship, and I’m happy that we explored the idea of reigniting our relationship, even though we didn’t follow through. It felt like the closure we never really had. I’m thankful for your counsel and your advice. You were always able to rationalize my emotions in a way that made sense to me. You saw the things I didn’t, pointed things out for me to watch for. I’ll always be thankful for that night, at the park by your house, on the swings. You were very soft and kind to me that night. That’s the version of you that I always saw inside, but that you seemed to hide from everyone. I will cherish that memory forever. It’s one of my favourites. I will also cherish the night we went to the beach and stood together in silence, watching the waves crash into the shore. It was blistering cold and windy, but it didn’t feel so bad with you there. You always knew how to hold my emotions with care. We had a karaoke session on the drive home – your singing voice isn’t that bad, actually. You played some serious songs, and some weird ones. We always knew how to have fun.

You send me pictures and memes and memories, and I do the same. It was crazy that I went for a trail ride at a barn we’d been to eons ago and the same ponies that we rode were alive and thriving. I really felt that I regained a piece of myself that had been missing that day.

You were my true equal. I admired you. I was jealous of you. I idolized you. You were my best friend. I trusted you with my whole self. I am inspired by you and motivated by you. You were there for me when my dad died. You always showed up for me. Until you didn’t, of course, but I can look back now with enough clarity to realize that it was a perfect storm of my own making. I guess it was true what people were telling me, that it was not good to repress your emotions. I suppose that a year of pretending I was fine and not acknowledging my father’s death had finally caught up to me – and when that grief got it’s spiny hands around my young neck, I snapped. I blamed you, of course, because I wasn’t able to look in myself in the mirror. I cut my hair. All of it. I bleached it. I became a different person to try to keep hiding from the grief. Performative efforts that only led to more problems. I look back and I understand now, and I’m sorry. We were just kids, and neither of us knew how to deal with the waves of pain that were drowning me. I couldn’t see out of the darkness, and you couldn’t pull me from it. Our end was inevitable.

I avoided driving down the main street by your house for years. You admitted to driving by mine. I wonder how many times we’d passed each other, or come close to, and not noticed. Again I have to think about the timing of it all. We reconnected exactly when we were supposed to. We discussed reigniting our relationship, I wasn’t opposed to trying again, although I had already admitted to myself and my mother that I would be unhappy with you. You felt there was too much history. At the time I didn’t understand what you meant, but I’m happy that we left that conversation there. You helped me to realize that I was looking for something more, something deeper. A partner that didn’t make me want to rip my hair out or get the urge to push them into a lake. We were best friends and romantic partners once, but we have grown far too apart as people to ever reconcile the relationship we’d once had with each other. It would never be the same, and both of us would have been disappointed. Our reconnection gave me clarity, though. You would often vent to me about your lack of success on Hinge, the girls you met, the dates you went on. You were partially the reason why I was influenced, weeks later, by a friend to download the app. A couple of days after that, I met the man who I’m sure is, or will be, the love of my life. I will never admit this to you, but maybe you are to thank for that. Without that closure from you, I think I always would have thought back to you as “the one that got away”. You’re not, though. You’re the one who set me free. A stepping stone to me becoming the person I was meant to be, and finding the person I was meant to be with.

I will always be fond of you, and I will always love you, but I am not in love with you anymore. Within a few months, we successfully ran through Adele’s album 25 . From Hello to Send My Love To Your New Lover. As the song goes, we both know we ain’t kids no more.

I’m sad we had to part ways – you’d become a staple in my life again. We still talked, occasionally, but I knew it would be difficult to explain being friends with an ex who was also one of my best friends, and an ex that I hold in such high regard and esteem. I had gotten used to our phone calls and our facetimes and our banter. Maybe I shouldn’t have distanced myself the way I did. Maybe I should have defended and maintained our friendship instead of worrying about the optics of being friends with and hanging out with an ex, but to be quite honest with you, and I’m sure you feel the same now that you have your own partner, our friendship was never worth that risk. No matter how close we were.

So this is my thank you letter. My gratitude letter. My goodbye letter. You were always there for me. You always showed up when I needed you. Not just as kids, but in our adult life too – at least until recently. Thank you for keeping me company in the emergency room, talking to me and playing phone games with me so that I wouldn’t feel so scared and alone. Thank you for taking my calls and facetiming me to catch up and chat, even when you were on the other side of the country on a camping trip with your friends. You always made time for me, no matter how busy you were or what you were up to. You always made sure that you would show up for me. I think you will always be one of the greatest friends I ever had. I wish I’d maintained our closeness, but I understand that the circumstances of our now friendship can complicate matters, especially where our partners are involved, although mine is not threatened by you, and of course would never have any reason to be. I hope that we will always stay in each others lives, even at the most limited capacity.

Until then… You Were Cool, and I Hope You’re Happy 🙂