I miss her.

And I’m not sure if I miss you.

I mean, I must, right? For five years I spent multiple days locked in a deep text conversation with you, all day, nearly every day. I saw you in person more than anyone except my husband. You were one of the only people I bothered to venture out of the house for.

So I must miss you…right?

But the problem is, I miss her. I miss her more than anything. I miss her more than I ever thought was possible. I’m not the same without her. I never will be. And I don’t want to be.

I miss her and unfortunately, whether I not I miss you is wrapped up in the complication of missing her because, well, let’s just be honest about it: you weren’t there when she died.

You weren’t there in the weeks leading up to her leaving because you had your own shit going on…supposedly. You weren’t there the day she left because our friendship had already ended…because you weren’t there in the weeks leading up to it. You weren’t there after she left because you chose not to be.

However you may have felt about me for five years was completely eclipsed by the fact that at the end of the day, you weren’t there when she died.

And I will never, ever forgive you for it.

I wish I could be more equivocal, truly. I wish there was some modicum of my being that felt like peoplehavedifferentperspectivesyouhadalotgoingon- youareemotionallyavoidantandprobablystilllearning-mayberegretit-maybeIcangetoveritmaybethefriendshipwasandwillbeworthit-mayemaybemaybe.

But. No.

There is no way to divorce how I feel about you from how I felt about her because there is no comparison. She was my soulmate, the light of my life, the best thing that ever happened to me, the very structure and foundation my life was built around for twelve years. She was my everything.

You were someone I thought would be my best friend forever, yes, but you’re also human. Fallible. Not perfect. As much as I truly loved you (and I did), unfortunately, you can’t compare. Because she wasn’t human, wasn’t fallible. You can’t compare because she was perfect.

In the ultimate moments of exhilaration or devastation in life, they are equal. Extreme joy is the same as extreme sadness in two primary ways: they are each both (1) a sorting mechanism for the placement of connections in your life and (2) a harbinger for what it will look like after.

Losing her sorted you.

And my life is now forever changed by the lack of her. But it’s not, I think, changed by the lack of you.

Because what ultimately got sorted is that, well, I guess I don’t miss you.