You are my best friend. The person who makes me laugh and smile and finally feel like someone understands me. You are, in some ways, completely different to me – in the way you dress, or the experiences you’ve had, but in some ways, like your personality, interests and the way you carry yourself is the same. When I think of something, you are the first person I turn to, because I know that you will understand, even unspoken, because you will have thought of it too.
When you make a joke, you turn to me, because you know i will be laughing too, even when others might not get it. Your things are my things and my things are yours, and our other friends are just different. We get things about each other that no one else does, like how you understand that if I smile a certain way, it means I’m laughing or I’m sad.
We talk sometimes about things no one else understands – how broken our families are, how we both feel like we have shattered fragments of a mirror inside. No one gets it but you. We are both the laughing, funny, smiling friend, the one who is almost too loud and talks too fast, the one who always seems fine and perfect but isn’t.
We act like we don’t care but actually do, pretend to hate long conversations and not understand emotions, just smile and pretend everything’s fine but it’s not because we are not, we are breaking. Breaking. The first time we ever talked, I mean truly talked, was on a Thursday when we were walking in the pouring rain, alone.
I never found it easy to talk about things that really mattered, but in that moment, everything I was holding inside rushed out in a flood of relief. The things someone else would never had been able to say were said so casually because you knew that I would understand and I knew that you would too. You understood, and you felt it too.
Sick of being the perfect friend. Sick of pretending to be fine. Sick of always trying, trying. You and me, I said. We’re alone in this world, but we have each other. We talk about our broken families, of how your brother is always in an argument with your parents and you are the favourite child that got ruined by everything that goes on, of how in that way, I am like your older brother – the older child who is never quite good enough and pretends to be fine – and it hurts so much to admit that my parents don’t care as much.
I think that’s one of the reasons why I’m in love with your brother. He talks to me like how I talk to you, because we are the same – the example our parents set, but failed and the youngest exceeded. Of course, I can never tell you or him, because I can’t risk losing everything we have – I can’t risk losing you. Other times, we talk about how years ago, my parents almost had a divorce, almost ruining me and my sister, and how now I understand how you feel because your parents are doing that too. In a way, I think I love you, because if I ever fell in love, I imagine this is what it would feel like.
But, I know, from the depths of my slightly swollen heart, that I only love you because you mean so much to me, and understand me, even without words, exactly what I feel, and I could never live with losing you. When you’re far away, I can spend a whole day just waiting for you to text back, or to hear your voice, because I miss you, okay? I miss your laugh, you smile, how you pretend to hate it when I hug you. I miss your late night calls, or your texts to cheer me up when you know that I’m sad. I miss wearing you jumpers and clothes at your house while you wear my much comfier ones, I just miss you when you aren’t here, because it feels as if a part of me is gone.
So what I guess I’m trying to say is thank you. Thank you for being there when I needed you the most, like the time I broke down crying on the floor, my hand cut and bleeding from a china plate I threw at the wall and the first person I thought of calling was you, because I knew that you would understand. And I know you would probably hate me writing all of this, and laugh about me being so sentimental, but I wanted to show you that this is who I can be with you, only you.
So thank you.
