The time has gone by so fast, but the memories refuse to fade. I sometimes wonder if your mind is as stubborn as mine; if it replays the arguments over and over just like my own. Do your eyes leak tears at 3 in the morning when you can’t sleep like mine do? Do you see me in the hall and wonder how I’m doing, just like I do when I see you? Or did you forget everything we went through? Do you tell your friends the jokes we shared, and not even realize it? Does your new phone hold our old pictures, or did those just disappear too?

It’s almost been two years, and the thoughts still run through my mind. We never got closure; well at least, I didn’t. When it all started, I didn’t expect to stop talking to you completely. I thought we’d fight for a day, apologize, and then go back to normal. And we did, at least for a little bit. But not even a month later, the same dispute blew up in our faces.

I don’t think either of us expected what was to come.

I remember, we didn’t speak for a week. That was the first time we didn’t have constant contact in all five years of our friendship.

It was rough.

I cried every night, but kept it all a secret from my mom. I didn’t want her to know that we were fighting. I didn’t want her to say “I told you so,” which of course she did when she found out a week later.

Once we finally talked the next week, it was back to normal again. But, not for long. I think we had forgotten what happened just the week before, and when we remembered, we pushed each other away again. It hurt me to pull away from you, my best friend, but at the same time, it made sense.

When you tried to talk about the obvious tension, I refused to do it at school. I didn’t want to cry there. I knew I would, so I avoided it. I knew school was the only place we could talk because your family hated me. However, the thought of talking about our problems at school scared me. I knew we’d talk in the bathroom, the one that holds so many memories. I didn’t want the tears of sadness, that were surely to be shed, to mix with the tears of happiness and laughter that fell in that bathroom just months before. So, a week later, I still refused to talk about it.

You finally cornered me a few months later, at my birthday party in the bathroom. This bathroom was different, though. This one was from my childhood. You were about to fill this bathroom with your pleading tears, and with my stubborn ones. But I couldn’t avoid you this time. You had me trapped.

I’m going to be honest. After the secret conversation in the bathroom, I was scared that we’d keep our new promise to go back to normal. I didn’t want normal. At least, not when it meant waiting for another fight just so we could make up all over again.

I didn’t want to put myself through the eventual pain of a toxic relationship like ours was becoming. So every time I caught myself slipping back in, I pulled right back out. When I was trying to keep myself away, I felt like an addict. Every time we laughed together, I felt as though I had relapsed on the most addictive drug. But the drug was our friendship, and boy, was it addictive.

We spent eight months holding awkward conversations. Conversations meant for acquaintances, not best friends. In that time, I got closer to my other friends as they helped me deal with the pain of losing my best friend. So did you, but you seemed angry that I was bonding with people other than you. Your anger made me pull away even more.

About a week before junior year started, I sent you a text the length of a novel explaining my point of view. I hoped that my explanation would help us be less awkward at school than we had been before, but your response was short and sweet. That was not at all what I expected from you after I poured my whole heart out. After that response, I knew we were both done fighting for our toxic relationship.

Watching you laugh and smile with your other friends has made me realize how much I miss being close to you. But my heart and mind have been fighting, trying to decide what’s best for me, and after more than a year, I think they finally made a decision. I’m OK without you. I may not be better, but I’m definitely OK.