I have no right to miss you, but I do. I'm not going to say that our friendship is over because sometimes you comment on my Facebook posts, and once every couple of months I'll check up on you or you'll check up on me and we'll see how each others lives are going, ask about school, talk about work. A year ago you were my best friend, we told each other everything, and now we don't even speak. I recognize that this is partly my fault. If I wouldn't have said some things, if I wouldn't have let my own personal emotions get in the way of our friendship, maybe we'd still be friends. Maybe in some parallel universe, we would still communicate, I would know more about what's going on in your life other than what I see on your social media. If somewhere along the way we both managed to get along better, and if I wouldn't have judged you so harshly or stopped talking to you, or maybe you wouldn't have been selfish sometimes or you would've listened to me more often. Maybe I wouldn't miss you like I do.

Missing you isn't a constant thing. It comes and goes in waves, and sometimes it'll be a month before I even remember how much I miss you. Sometimes it'll happen a few times in one day. Sometimes I'll be riding a bus and I'll miss you so much that every part of my body aches with longing. Sometimes I'll remember something else or I'll hear something from you and I'll be so mad at you that I can't even imagine ever wanting to see you again. Maybe that makes me a terrible person. Then I blame myself and wonder if it's entirely my fault that we aren't friends anymore and I wonder what all I did to drive you off so completely that you don't even care.

Sometimes I wonder if we were never even really friends. If our friendship was a minor and a fleeting one based off of some kind of need that I had to have someone in my life, and that you only were friends with me because you feel the need to help everyone out that is lost and alone, like you are a mother bird. So many people love that about you, but I am not so sure. I think it gets you into trouble sometimes. Then I think back to our great summer walks and our days in your kitchen and our shopping trips and all of the times we cried on each other and slept in the same bed and my heart aches again because I've never had another friend like that. I've never had another friend that knew me in such a complete way, someone I spent so much time with.

I had so many firsts with you. You were one of the first people I drove around in my car. I got one of my first real jobs with you. I got my first freedoms with you and I grew up with you. You were my childhood friend and I wonder if that friendship belonged in our childhood and we shouldn't have rekindled it. I feel like I know you so well but also not at all. I don't think I was ever good enough for you- I know you never thought I was good enough for you, and none of the friends that you got along with better than you did with me never thought I was.

I know I probably won't see you again, and that saddens me, but also sometimes makes me feel safe because I am intimidated by you, and I am self-conscious around you. I know we'll never get along in the way we did for years and we'll never have those great summers again. Everything is different now, not just because we've grown up and gone our separate ways, but also because everything changed a couple summers ago. I don't know why, but I know you're different. I might be different too but it's always harder to recognize changes in yourself. I miss you, and I miss the friendship that we had, and every time I remember our spring break or our summer days, or the times of shorts and gravel in our feet and walks to thrift stores and to get coffee or candy, and overnights where we both passed out anywhere and woke up hours late and skipped school, I miss you. I miss you so much that it makes me want to curl up in a ball and die. Worse than any breakup I've had, worse than nearly any feeling. Beyond that, though, every single day that I am alive, with a dreadful uncertainty, I wonder if I'll ever have a friend that I can get along with the way I got along with you.

I know I don't deserve to miss you, because I made plenty of mistakes and said plenty of things, and I know that we grew apart and I was not really a great friend, but I miss you. I do, despite what I know I should feel, or any residual guilt.