Dearest Friend,
I don’t know quite how to begin.
I guess I spent the better part of 6 years not thinking about you.
And then I saw you one day, at the party of a friend, and you never quite left my head after that.

It’s the smallest things that trigger memory, I’ve found. It happens when you don’t pay attention, suddenly someone will do or say something particular, and you’re shot back through time.

You have the same way of tugging at your sleeve now as you did then. You pull at it until it covers half your hand, shoulders a bit hunched, like you’re trying to be smaller, to disappear. It’s such a you thing to do, that suddenly I’m 13 again and you’re with me and nothing makes more sense than you and me together.

We had such a crush on horror. Do you remember ? The horror films we’d watch with your family when I slept over on Friday nights, the stories we’d make up as we got lost during the annual school run, the short-stories we’d write and pass on to each other in faded notebooks. We were fucking queens of the macabre.
And I found a lot of things a lot less scary if you were there. I trusted you. And that perhaps was the scariest of all; we were so close. You got me like no one else. It was as if we had this understanding that we never talked about, something that wasn’t spoken out loud because it wasn’t necessary, or maybe because we didn’t have the words… Well, I don’t watch horror films anymore. I did that with you, for you. There’s no point now.

This is out of the blue, but emotions are impossible, you should know.

I remember you saying once you could really use some warm coke. And I didn’t even think “My god, that’s weird”, instead it was a moment of “That’s new. That’s interesting.” That’s what you were. Interesting. The most intriguing person in the entire school. In my life in general, actually. Thank you for kicking the boring out of me, if I owe it to anyone, I owe it to you.

I remember you passing me a note in class saying, “Why can’t life be like the movies?”, and I still think about it. I remember our fight, although I still can’t remember what we were fighting over. I remember baking chocolate cake and messing it up 3 times in a row. I remember books. Films.
I don’t remember music. That wasn’t us.
I remember writing a horror story for class, and then omitting the scariest part. You’d read it, and you knew I’d left something out, and you asked me why I’d done it, but I never told you. I’ll tell you now; I was afraid. Afraid they’d look at me like I was crazy or deranged or a freak, like I wasn’t normal. You’d have understood it, I think, you’d have complained all the same, but you would have understood. You shared my fascination with the dark, and I should have known (really, I should have), that of all the people in the room, only you really mattered, and you would never have looked at me like I was a freak. Not because it meant you’d be one too, but because you were too smart to even consider thinking that. (I’m sorry for not being stronger).

And I remember us in the bus on our way to swimming class. I remember looking at you and telling you that I loved your smile, that it made me happy, made me want to smile too. I remember how your face sort of lit up, and you smiled more, like I knew you would.
You practically shone in that moment. That’s how I remember it, how I remember you even now. Radiating light.

You were beautiful. I mean, downright beautiful. You had long black hair and pale skin and ridiculously big brown eyes. That smile. And you had cold hands, exactly like me. You were impossibly bright. And we had a fall-out and I don’t remember why.

I remember dreaming about you dying. Thinking about it, even now, still makes my chest ache. It was such a beautiful, terrifying dream. So colourful and then suddenly, everything fading, gray and colourless, and you were gone. Losing you, god, I couldn’t bear it then. And now that’s what’s happened.

I’ve lost you.

Irrevocably? Perhaps. You found others (so did I), and I’m dying to know if it feels the same. If it’s the same type of deep-rooted, unexplained, unconditional understanding you share with them. (Can I ask? Is it? Is this even how you remember me?). I certainly haven’t found this part of myself that I found with you, in anyone else.

You were my best friend, and… soulmate is so fucking cheesy, but I wanna use it anyway. Soulmate. You felt like a soulmate. Like someone who honest to god knew the workings of my soul and accepted it for what it was.
How often does that happen in a lifetime?

I’m sorry. I miss you.

All my love, always,
A Friend

Ps. Do you remember your mum making earl grey tea? I hadn’t ever had it before. It became, and to this day still is, my favourite tea. That is something that won’t ever change. So perhaps there’s hope for us yet.