They say forgive and forget, but I can do neither of those things.

They also say time heals, but I guess it's still too soon. You'd think 5 years would've been enough to fix all that's happened, but I guess it's a wound deeper than I thought.

To begin, we were the best of best friends. We were completely inseparable. It was like finding your soul sister in elementary school, but I never knew the impact junior high and high school would've had on us. Junior high gave us our own set of challenges, as we became adolescents with our own set of problems. Sexuality was the biggest concern, and with each other, we realized that we weren't straight and that we loved each other, but that's where the problems began. I think you'd say the same. I'd at least hope. You were so sure of your sexuality, and I well... I was struggling so hard, but you wanted us to be "out and proud" as they say. I had other ideas though, for at this time something as simple as the clothes I wore made me the mockery of our grade. All I wanted was to blend into the brick and cinder block of our school. The last thing I wanted was to add canon fodder to my already miserable existence at school. Let alone I was nervous about coming out in general, but you wanted us to holds hands, and tell everything and everyone. The only thing I regret is trying to not go along with this. It would've saved all the guilt and shame I felt, for the response everyone else gave us was a mix of shock (friends) and shame (enemies). Honestly this is why I had to 'break it off.' I needed to run to somewhere safe and recognizable, and it had nothing to do with my feelings of you, but you kept pushing me to be myself, so we continued this cycle of love and fear. I don't know why but I felt a mix of exhilaration and pain? I had found a piece of myself, but for the pain, I could never fully place it or know what to call it.

Throughout the years, you claimed me your soul mate, your North Star. I was the reason for your happiness and even though you'd "follow my light to the right direction," there was always something in the way blocking you, preventing us to be together. And honestly, this was so much pressure for a 13-14 year old in a sexuality crisis and a crap home life. I felt trapped and that I had to do what I had to do to appease you, while somehow making it worthwhile for myself and 'explore' my sexuality to 'prove' I really am this way. To be fair, this is what I was raised to do, accidentally, so I did things I'd never do, I experienced the first kiss and sexual experiences, and well I should've realized the first time that this was something to run from, if I hadn't already, but I didn't until the damage was done.

The first time we tried intimate things, I passed out, and you left me naked and cold on your bedroom floor, as you slept in your warm comfy top bunk. I never told anyone this because it made me feel used, but for some reason I gave you the benefit of the doubt and continued on with our helter-skelter romance-friendship. Then the fights began; I started to hate you for everything, and I wanted out of everything: friendship and all. You managed to twist emails and words around to get friends on your side, while the less swayed remained neutral to see both sides of the story and help us both out. Even people that I thought of acquaintances managed to come around, and somehow knew of our emails back and forth about our fights, and it was always worded in a way that everyone would come up going "What the hell, Em?" I remember getting a few slaps in the face, if I must be honest. We organized an after school meeting, and it ended with lots of tears and screaming. Eventually, I had to run out before I started a fistfight because our friends wanted this meeting and they wanted me to stay too long. The only way out was to scream “Let me go!” and honestly that’s the most symbolic thing of our relationship. “Let me go.”

I remember crying to my teacher as she walked by me, waiting for my father to pick me up, but how was I to explain that I felt manipulated and used?

So the fight ended, and I got what I wanted in the end. We stopped talking, but so did most of our friends, and that was the most miserable thing for me to accept. Weeks passed, and I, in my low-self esteem, needed to apologize for freeing myself. Ignoring all the times you did things, despite it making me uncomfortable, despite making me do things I didn’t want to, and leaving me cold and naked on your bedroom floor. So we began this horrible cycle, and then again we became friends, and the awkward lovers, but this time there was a kink in the feelings, and it was that you had a girlfriend.

I kept my distance from that, and I told myself that I would find someone else and that it was okay. But it never was, you expressed to me that you still loved me, and that you forgive me, and that you miss me, but that you love your new girlfriend, and I tried my best to keep these feelings in the back of my mind. Not thinking of anything of it, I invited you to our usual friendly sleepovers, thinking this would be a symbol of us rekindling our friendship. I never imagined it’d rekindle more, but I was 15 this time and didn’t know the rule of “old flames”, so we did things, and I felt guilt and confused at how all this happened. You went around telling everyone I planned it on purpose, that I am some succubus who is using my sexuality against you. You had everyone believe my intent was to break apart you and your girlfriend, that when you did, I was to blame. I, in my confused memory of “I’d get back with you if something ever happened to me and my girlfriend”, asked you out, and instead of giving me an email back, you forwarded it to all of our friends.

No response, just avoiding, and all my friends screaming at me. I was called every name in the book before I had the chance to explain my confusion. My side. That the sleepover wasn’t a planned homewrecking. That I wasn’t there to break you up, and try to win you back. I just wanted to feel something, for I was numb, and that was apparently my fault and my mistake. I was a coward for “emailing you”, when you broke up with your girlfriend over text after not talking to her for weeks. (You know something has to be up when the two exes you had that you cheated on are friends from this.)

Everyone said their words, and some messaged me over the internet with the words that “all I do is cause misery where ever I go” and at this point I was numb enough. In this time of these verbal assaults, there was nothing from you. You avoided me, ignored me, and I got the hint. So I went into the deepest lowest place anyone can think of. I tried to commit suicide, as some sort of saving grace to free you of all that you’ve caused. That somehow my life was worth less than your happiness. I spent months in the hospital, and still no response from you. It was as if I was cut off from the world, and because of this, my healing took ages. It was agony. I felt abandoned, and by the time I did come back to school, the stories you spread did their damage and people I barely knew told me that I should’ve succeeded because I am worse than scum.

I remember crying to my teacher six months after this ordeal, but I had no words to explain everything. I wanted to tell him everything, but how do I mention that not only some of the kids in his class, but the one I gave everything to, made me feel so scorned and violated? I lied to him for the sake of saving drama from myself and protecting the small fragments I had left, but in the end that’s one of my biggest regrets I have. Maybe if I would’ve told more of the truth, I’d have healed quicker. Only the gods know.

And yet, after this ordeal, time passed, years went, and I somehow became friends with you again, but it was never the same. I couldn't trust myself around you. I couldn't show signs of weakness. I couldn't allow my guard to fall, and yet you said the same things, "that the stars truly want us to be together forever. That we are meant to be friends forever" and this made me feel sick to my stomach. I couldn't hang out with you, but I also couldn't stop talking to you. There was this sense of memory. This sense of I gave myself to you that I will never get back, and I had to talk to you to still feel like it's there inside of me. It took many tries, but after a letter you gave out to me five years after my suicide attempt, basically saying you're sorry and that you're glad that I didn't succeed or else you'd feel to blame, I lost it. I didn't care what your intent was with anything anymore, and I knew I had to heal the right way, and it was to cut you out of everything. To cut all the people that said all those nasty things to me years ago, completely, for I knew they never looked at me the same. There was always contempt, but the other side of our friend circle was okay with me, and so in the end it was a nasty stalemate in which all I felt was scorn, so I cut myself out of the equation. It's been six months since then, and there have been times you try to reach out to me, despite my blatantly obvious attempts of deleting and blocking you, but you always find a social media account I forgot to try and worm your way back in, but I simply can't let you back for every time I think of you all I remember is feeling used, violated, and scorned. That's not a healthy foundation for a friendship, let alone for me.

Now I can say you're fully out of my system. I had to throw everything out you ever gave me. Delete everything I ever had that made me think of you. Delete you from myself, but it still doesn't stop the nightmares, the random memories that pop on repeat that remind me of where I have been. That I was left COLD and NAKED at 13 YEARS OLD. I wish I could say I can forgive and I can forget, for I hate anger and try to be as forgiving as possible, but when you feel like you've been emotionally manipulated and misused, it's hard to forgive. I wish I could be angrier at times, because we really did have some good times, and I wish I could fully see you as some awful person, but I never could. Maybe that's just the various gas lighting techniques I have been exposed to from you and others. Who knows?

All I do know is that I will never be the same, again, and that I will struggle with suicide and PTSD until the very day I die.