I met one of my best friends the first day of my eighth-grade year.

She walked into gym class, sat down next to me, and introduced herself. We proceeded to spend the rest of that first gym class considering every girl and boy that walked into the gym and told ourselves this would be one of the worst years of gym class ever. It turned out to be the best, and it was all because of her.

We had a thousand and one inside jokes.

We made up songs about apples and sang the C-H-R-I-S-T-I-A-N song until our classmates wanted to strangle us. We argued over how to say Sudoku and what exactly “not fish” was. We cried together and we laughed together. We were there for everything. But not anymore. Now, you have someone else.

You’re getting married in a few months, and I won’t be standing by your side.

If someone would have told us that two years ago, we would have laughed and forgotten about it a minute later, because of course we would be in each other’s weddings; we were going to be in each other’s lives for the rest of our time on this earth.

We were best friends, and we couldn't have seen this coming.

When you met him, it was a whirlwind of activity. None of us liked him, but you were in love. You’d never felt this way before. My mom tried to help me rationalize, to tell me that some girls aren’t the same once they feel that love. I was stuck, not understanding how six years of friendship was suddenly so insignificant as soon as a boy told you he loved you.

We got into a fight, and it wasn’t just a fight.

It was a war, with words like blades being tossed around only with the intention of hurting one another. It was insensible and irrational, but we didn’t care because we were hurt and angry and it was much too late by the end to stop it all from exploding. The process made me see the ugly side of you, and after experiencing the full force of that ugly side this past year, it’s hard to remember the good. It’s hard to remember the nights we laughed until we cried and the days we drove for hours singing along to One Direction.

These past months the same thought has been reverberating through my head, “I hope you hurt, I hope you hurt, I hope you hurt.” When we removed ourselves from each other’s lives, it crushed me, because the fact of the matter is, friends can break your heart too. Now, though, I hope you heal. Now is the time for all of us to heal, to move on, and to focus on what makes us happy and healthy.

This experience has guaranteed that we will never be friends again, I know that, and I would honestly prefer it that way. But I had loved you for six years, and the girl I knew was an incredible person. I hope you're still the girl I met in that gym class all those years ago, because that’s how I would like to picture you. I hope that girl finds the happiness that she deserves.