To all the people I need to say sorry to
?
I followed you from school. You started looking back at me suspiciously, and finally, when we started inching up a hill, you accused me of following you as if I was a forty-year-old creep holding chloroform instead of a six-year-old girl like you.
We bonded over Sailor Moon, because I was crazy about her back then.
Then I moved countries, and I couldn’t keep up with Sailor Moon because it was on too early in the morning and dubbed in English, and I started watching PBS instead.
I don’t know who forgot to reply to the letters first, probably me, because I don’t remember being torn up about being forgotten.
D1
We weren’t close friends (even by 7-year-old standards), but I remember you clearly—I even remember your name, after all these years—because I remember your expression faltering.
Sorry, D. I didn’t mean to snub you saying ‘hi’ to me—so cheerfully, too—after I changed schools. I was so weird about boys back then, I didn’t want to acknowledge I knew one in case they thought you were my boyfriend or something.
S1 & D2
S, you got me as Secret Santa and that was the downfall of our friendship. I wanted a doll set just like some other girl in the class, or some other toy I could play with. Not the same backpack as you were wearing. I know now that you had been expecting us to have bff backpacks but I never put it on. Instead, a day later, I repeatedly kicked your backpack across the room after recess.
It was probably for the best I moved again.
Thankfully, I didn’t do anything like that with you, D (a girl D this time). The only thing awkward that went between us was when your mom was driving I and me to your great big house, I asked about your dad and your mom explained that they were divorced, and I didn’t know what that meant. How could two people that were married just not be married anymore?
I called you after I moved. A man picked up, and then when the phone was passed to you, we had a stilted conversation—there was nothing to talk about—, and I never called you again.
S2 & M
I enjoyed your friendship. Dancing to Backstreet Boys (although I didn’t get your obsession until the ‘90s nostalgia hit me later), playing with Barbies, your house was so big and nice, and your mom was so pretty. And you were so, so nice.
Then I met M a year later, and I decided Barbies were for babies. M didn’t put this idea in me. I just wanted to live Mean Girls but thankfully all the kids in 5th grade were too nice. I was invited to M’s birthday party at water park then I rubbed it in your face that you couldn’t come. M and the rest of her friends said that wasn’t cool. And it really wasn’t.
M, I suppose there isn’t anything big enough to apologize for all these years later, although I will apologize for that one winter a couple of years after I moved, when I was back in town for a month and only saw you once. My reasoning was that I had given you my phone number and you didn’t call me. But really, I was shocked that you were now wearing makeup and short skirts, and also, I had just bought the Sims and nobody could ply me off the computer.
K1 & K2
K1, I’m sorry I barged in your trip because I overheard L saying she couldn’t go. Anyways, that was about the last time I captain oblivioused my way into a social event because I became socially anxious and self-conscious once I became a teen.
K2, I’m sorry I didn’t say it was me when Ms. V accused you of doing a funny accent.
J1
Sorry my puppy chewed through your sister’s Sweet Valley High books.
Also, while I am on the topic of my puppy: sorry, A, for not being a better friend and paying more attention to Neopets than my real pet.
E
You were nice to me (which I later found out was partly due to our homeroom teacher telling you to be nice to me because I was new to the country), but then someone more exciting swooped in and I ignored the fuck out of your group. It was for the best, I guess, because we didn’t have much in common, and it was probably for the best you didn’t need to babysit me anymore.
You did call me once, a year or two after we graduated middle school, to ask me a grammar question for homework, but we didn’t catch up because I could hear your friend laughing in the background.
Y
Y, I’m sorry I didn’t say it was me when Mr. K picked up the note we’d been passing back and forth and he got offended about something bitchy about him that I had written about him on there. I can’t believe you never brought it up.
Also, I’m sorry for being a bitch that one time we met outside of school for the first time, and you said it was cool I was wearing a skirt, and I said, oh wait, you’re wearing a skirt, too, like I had just noticed after the entire day we spent together.
Thanks for being my e-mail buddy when I moved and had no friends.
Sometimes I wonder what you are doing. You became really sexually…well, sexually everything after high school, like you were making up for lost time, and after that one time in college when I met you and you practically moaned all over your boy friend while we were having dinner, and then you invited me to vacation with some guys afterwards… well, it sounded too much like a gangbang at the villa to my ears, so I stopped contacting you.
J2 & J3
I’m still close friends with you, J2, the only one that didn’t run for the hills or fade into oblivion out of this long list of ex-friends. I mean, we almost stopped being friends. Like, twice. Because I am a bitch and you are too, too obsessed with guys. I am sorry I talked behind your back about that with J3—your crush—when I was a teen.
J3, I’m sorry I talked behind your back with J2. Even once after I moved, I set you off on each other because I was bored. Also, I had a crush on you and I wonder where you are sometimes because you were a cool kid.
J4
J4, you were too sweet for me. I was a bitch to you because you were practically my only friend for two years because I was so tired of making new friends every time I moved, and you and I had like, nothing in common and I wanted a friend that did. It was not your fault at all, of course, but I just grew resentful of you for no good reason. Now I feel too guilty to ever contact you again.