{to an absent friend}

today my mother got in touch with a friend she hasn't spoken to in over 7 years. and it made me think of you. they stopped speaking after an argument all that time ago and realised today how much they had missed each other. i wonder if you ever miss me? i know for a long time i grieved our friendship. i still do sometimes. i have moments of longing, as i've never found the same connection with anyone else since. and i miss that. i miss you.

i sat here tonight, contemplating writing to you, and wondered what i would say. i wondered whether we would ever get over the hurt we caused each other. would we talk about it? should we talk about it? why didn't we talk about it?

i wondered whether i could genuinely ever forgive you for not reaching out to me when my father died. why you couldn't put our petty differences aside to let me know that you were thinking of me at a time i so desperately needed a real friend. i wondered if that meant you were never real.

i wondered whether i actually missed you, or if instead i missed what i thought we had. i wondered what exactly did we have that could be so easily shattered and irrevocably broken?

i made instant coffee for the first time in a long time tonight. and it made me think of you. you always told me i made the best coffee. but then in the later years of our friendship, you moved on to the healthier option of roobosh tea - maybe our friendship got left behind then? maybe it was over before it actually ended. like a lot of relationships: maybe we were already holding onto the threads of what it once was.

you were the best friend anyone could have wanted when i was lost and insecure. you were my anchor. my safe harbour for many years. you were my sanity. my comforter. i will never forget that and i will be eternally grateful for those years when you were so much more than a friend. you were my family.

even when i found my own feet and later my husband, you were there. i will never forget how you and your husband helped make cam's first date to oxford so memorable. how you helped me light the hundred candles in my flat and how your husband dressed up to play chauffeur and pick cam from the train station on what was your anniversary. i will never forget coming home after our wedding and finding rose petals scattered all around the house and a beautiful note welcoming us as a married couple. you were the only person i cried about leaving behind when we went on our extended honeymoon. and you were the first person i wanted to see when we got home...

so where did it all go wrong? time has clouded both my judgement and my memory. i attempted re-reading some of the emails we exchanged in the dying days of our friendship but they seemed trivial and petty. i couldn't really believe all that was washed away on the basis of some thoughtless words.

but the reality shows that it was. is friendship really so fragile? so delicate that a few careless words can unravel years of time, emotion and love? or was it just ours? i'm still not convinced. i still want to believe it was because of what wasn't said. because what was said doesn't seem important enough to have carried the weight of all that it took with it. and so maybe that is what i would ask you. why did you really walk away from us? was our friendship really so worthless, that you couldn't be bothered to stay and fight it out?

but i won't send this email or write this letter because i don't know if there is the strength in my heart. i don't know if i can cope with your vitriolic judgement or worse yet, your rejection if you don't even bother to respond. and what if you do? then i don't know if i can cope with what that might carry with it. maybe the wound hasn't healed. or maybe it has healed too completely. maybe i just wanted you to know that i do remember the best of you. and occasionally, just occasionally now, there are days like today when i still think of you.