Letters
How I was misunderstood
Article by Esa George, art by Leyla Kramarsky
To the girls,
It was always the seven of us. We were inseparable, comfortably cliqued off from the rest of our peers, classmates, and childhood friends. We knew that what we had was more special, much more consuming than any other dynamic within our proximity. You, A, lounging comfortably in your pool house atop the queen-size bed you rarely ever shared. You, just twenty feet from the house your parents were sleeping in, a beer in one hand, the TV remote in the other. You used to ask us if we thought our classmates were thinking about us, envious of what we had. I hadn’t given it much thought until I was out. At the time, I felt like my life’s trajectory would always be in sync with you six. I thought about how I would have nine bridesmaids, you all lined up beside my three sisters. The matching bridesmaids' dresses we jokingly strutted in inside the Nordstrom’s wedding aisle, just after dumplings and boba. I imagine the gowns adorning your figures as I prepare to declare my “I Do’s.” Would I be breaking some kind of bridesmaids record? Despite the betrayals and our blissful ignorance toward one another’s wants and needs, I miss you all because I am still longing for your validation.
I want to bump into you every time I’m home. I want to mend how I let myself be misunderstood and prove that I’ve recovered from losing you. I find myself subconsciously looking for your faces as I ride my bike along the Manhattan Beach Strand. I catch my own eyes in the windows of our old favorite restaurants, scanning for a glance that would never be reciprocated. I want you to catch a glimpse of how my spirit has been lifted in my separation from you. I want you to know that crossing paths with you wouldn’t bring me anxiety, but closure. I look for you in so many places because we stained almost every room we anchored ourselves to.
We exist in Snapchat “three years ago today’s,” an inactive shared Instagram account, and my iCloud's constant nagging to delete “large attachments” for my deteriorating storage space, that I just can’t allow myself to let disappear. We exist in the embarrassed glance I exchange with my tenth-grade English teacher as I fill my basket at our local CVS—it happens way too fucking often. We exist in the shame I feel when my mom starts to question whether or not I am lying about something again, even the small things. I hate that I was dishonest for so long. We exist in the hesitancy I have towards smoking again. It’s hesitancy to enter that hazy state where my mind spirals and returns back to you. We spent so much of our time together in that hazy state. I hate that I was made to feel like hiding so much of myself, leaving me misunderstood so often, but what was at the root was that I was doing things that were not true to me. I wouldn’t have excused all of the betrayals so easily if that weren’t the case.
I live through it on my phone. I watch your sake bomb videos, your rave montages, and your mardi gras outfit pictures at Tulane. I live vicariously. That little spark of interest and concern for you that no pail of water would ever be capable of putting out. I read your public birthday dedications to each other, the typical “I love all of the memories we have together” striking my Achilles heel. I was a part of so many of them, only now, I can't participate in the “and I can't wait to make many more with you in the future.” That is why I miss you… our story is stagnant, but yours has so much potential for a future.
I hope you know I was sincere, and I stayed because I thought there were things we would uncover about each other over time that weren’t present from the beginning. I never faked it with any of you. I naively believed that our gradual road toward vulnerability would unpack a mutual codependence, some makeshift pot of gold that so few friendships ever reach. I don’t speak down on you to just anyone. In fact, I feel misunderstood by those who I’m getting to know who didn’t know me when I was with you guys. We crammed so many long-term, lingering wounds into the years that we shared. Nicknamed the “shit-starter” of our friend group, if there is one thing I want you all to know is that I stirred the pot so frequently for our own sake. I wanted to be confrontational at every single minor inconvenience to make it last. It didn’t outlive my efforts, and we were all unfair to myself for pretending that was the root of the problem.
I think about you guys, now, through the bleak shivers that travel down my body when I get a feeling that I am unwelcome, not wanted somewhere. How on Earth could our group of seven now make me dread making connections in a new place, even with the freedom of new beginnings encouraged at every corner? We weren’t good people when we were with each other, but we made each other feel good, and that was the most important emotion, the driving force of our inseparability. You were there for what felt like the most fundamental years of my growth. In the conviction of your bored despondence towards loved ones and people who looked out for us, you convinced me that I didn’t like my mom. We villainized the most loving people in each other’s lives because they were concerned about us, and about how fast we were changing. Our collective gloomy, downcast attitude spoiled what should’ve mattered. Bailing on family commitments was one rotten repeat offense. Following an after-school “smoke sesh” in the Prius of some senior one of us was hooking up with, I showed up high out of my mind to my younger brother’s talent show, laughing the whole time at the twelve-year-olds’ performances. I bet I looked like a monster, or was it the marijuana that was clouding my judgment? I changed the way I dressed. I lost a part of my self-expression. My third-grade teacher, standing across from a completely different girl six years later, looked me up and down in front of her students to tell me I was going to be dress-coded. I flipped her off to show off to you guys. I wanted you guys to think I was a badass. Was it validation? Partially. It was because I wanted to be in. I wanted you to think that I was a friend you never wanted to lose, and, well, most of you lost me. It baffles me how I could only uphold a five-minute conversation with just three of you now, even after all of the late nights, the breaks in the bathroom, the “my stomach is killing me, coach,” ditching P.E. to get high and experience our momentary escapes from what we branded to be such a “dreadful” reality.
When my phone buzzes every so often, I glance, my favorite picture of you, the one of you dressed in suspenders and your very “scholarly” glasses from Preps vs. Jocks homecoming day flashes back at me. “Brooke: FaceTime Call.” I answer it, always. I get the usual update on your life at Tufts. Our friendship has somehow made it out of the ruins of the ticking time bomb that our friend group had deteriorated from. You assure me that you will be able to have all the visitors you can on the Vineyard this summer, our unspoken little exchange for all the days you stayed with me back home in LA. But that thing that you can’t quite help mentioning (and I can’t help hoping you mention) always comes up. “Guess what the girls are up to?” Out of all the girls in the world, it’s funny how we need no clarification when the words “the girls” are spoken; I know exactly who. I think there will always be some invisible string keeping us linked in even the thinnest of threads. Our tapestries will forever overlap, the threading unbearable, yet infinitely interwoven.
Second Letter: to me
What I’d wished I’d known right when it ended
What do you do when you lose inseparability? It feels like you’ve lost a life; you’re embarrassed for how much weight the people you lost once held in determining your happiness–they don’t seem phased by it like you are. Perhaps it’s one of the few inconveniences that comes with allowing yourself to feel things so much harder than the people around seem to be doing. But you also recognize that you may have come across that way just the same; there was a constant discrepancy that you refused to let blindsight all of you until it was too late.
Maybe it was in the way you never touched. Half of them hated hugs; “I hugged you yesterday” spoken to a dejected frown when your gesturing for a hug is not reciprocated. That speaks volumes about how you rarely met each other’s wants and needs, but you should realize soon that you never communicated what you needed either. You just felt confident and welcome atop the throne-like wooden deck claimed by the junior class. The voice in the back of your head when you want to give physical affection tells you they don’t want that touch. You are a person shaped by experiences; you’ll forever have difficulties believing someone who tells you that they are there for you. You will struggle to open up in the future, speak up when bothered since your “pity party” has been mocked far too frequently. On the bright side, you won’t need to worry about being intoxicated to feel like the people around you want you there for much longer.
You’re gonna get this really shitty feeling every so often, when you’re in a place that you have a specific memory of the seven of you associated with that place. You’re gonna blame yourself for ever letting them into those spaces, for you miscalculated how long they would stick around in your life. You’re gonna wish that you never allowed people to convince you that they deserved a spot in those places and those memories, for what was once sacred and made you smile, is hindered by those open wounds.
You who is now writing about blaming the people who you just miss. You miss them so much.