Dear Best Friend,
I knew you before I knew myself. I knew that you were fluid, unstable--a spirit in constant flux, but of course you believed otherwise. You were so full of your parents' opinions that you thought they tasted like your own. I knew it wasn't your fault. You didn't know otherwise. Nothing about you was secured as wholly "you," because you were bound too tight to know what that sinful "awareness" truly felt like.
You remained undefined until the private school system they shipped you to could no longer feed you the "how to" manual for life. Then I saw you morph into one of the crazies, all at once. Abstinence is a curious concept, but sexuality is far curiouser--especially for those who had been taught to ignore their own. You hadn't held hands with a boy for 18 years, and then you kissed one, sexed one, and loved one all in the time it took for me to wash the high school filth from my hands. Don't get carried away, I told you, the real world is a drama-ridden, hormone obsessed, overall ridiculous business. But I was too late. You were already a victim to its madness. It wasn't your fault though... It was all so wonderful and you had been starved, I knew that. I would wait for you to acclimate.
I knew you before I knew myself. I knew that you were fluid, unstable--a spirit in constant flux, but of course you believed otherwise. You were so full of your parents' opinions that you thought they tasted like your own. I knew it wasn't your fault. You didn't know otherwise. Nothing about you was secured as wholly "you," because you were bound too tight to know what that sinful "awareness" truly felt like.
You remained undefined until the private school system they shipped you to could no longer feed you the "how to" manual for life. Then I saw you morph into one of the crazies, all at once. Abstinence is a curious concept, but sexuality is far curiouser--especially for those who had been taught to ignore their own. You hadn't held hands with a boy for 18 years, and then you kissed one, sexed one, and loved one all in the time it took for me to wash the high school filth from my hands. Don't get carried away, I told you, the real world is a drama-ridden, hormone obsessed, overall ridiculous business. But I was too late. You were already a victim to its madness. It wasn't your fault though... It was all so wonderful and you had been starved, I knew that. I would wait for you to acclimate.
But before long you were getting kicked out of your parents house, failing cosmetology school, and dating a convict who siphoned every penny from your part-time, minimum wage job. Things such as tattoos and abortion didn't elicit one of your thick-headed rants, and that scared me.
You no longer care to attend our every so often best friend meetings. If I see you before you've changed your hair another three times, I'm lucky. You have snapped every tie that connected you to your "previous life," forcefully, mercilessly, and without any sense of remorse. Mine is the only one to withstand your chaos, but the more your moral compass shatters, the more you deny responsibility for your actions, and the more you allow yourself to become a product of unnecessary drama and disgusting superfluities, the more I begin to wonder when I should purge myself of your plague. And that, too, scares me.
You are defining yourself in all the wrong areas, and that is entirely your own fault.
Sincerely,
Your Best Friend
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