Dear First Major Ex-Boyfriend Of My High School Best Friend

Dear First Major Ex-Boyfriend Of My High School Best Friend,

I saw the other day on Facebook that you have a big beard now, a wife, and a baby on the way.  Or maybe you already had the kid, but I saw the pictures of your wife when she was still pregnant.  In any case, I was happy to see that you seem happy.

Because I'm a pedant at heart, you'll notice I inserted the word "seem" into that last sentence.  And that, First Major Ex-Boyfriend Of My High School Best Friend, is going to be the key word that drives this entire letter.  You see, while I'd rather not imagine you in any way shape or form, I'm forced into it by this very composition-- and because of that, I imagine that though your wife is rosy-cheeked and you're looking more like a man than a boy these days, that your happiness is only temporary, reaching a meek "seem" instead of a resounding "sure."

I know this because I know who you are, and I only know who you are through how you make others feel. Isn't that the way we learn most about people to begin with?

Maybe you've made plenty of people feel valued.  Loved, even.  Maybe you'll be a better father than yours was, and maybe your wife can't help but be overwhelmed with an immense flood of satisfaction and pride when she looks into your beady, void eyes.  And all of those things are fabulous.

But, despite these lovely sentiments, the fact is that underneath your excessive facial hair and the cold blood behind your absent jawline lies a slug, a spineless shadow of a man, an immature may-as-well-be-a-bastard.

Yeah, I wasn't the most attractive teenager, and yeah, I was in middle school.  There is no denying it.  I probably would have made fun of me too.  My glasses grazed the top of my cheekbones and were cheaply made in China by nameless, scum-faced children paid in water crescents. I had buckteeth, which gave you the inspiration to create my Latin genus and species, Vampiris Rodentia.  A second stomach covered my first, and for whatever reason I thought it was appropriate to wear butterfly clips in my hair.  You told me I looked like a man, that I was probably tougher and stronger than some boys on the football team.  And, because you knew I crushed hard on everything that walked, told one of your friends (who I later dated and was abused by) that I would probably have sex with him if he were to date me.

I've heard from many that I've got a fantastic smile. I have abs and a rather fantastic ass, or so I'm told.  I wear contacts.  My cheekbones rarely need blush.  I still crush on most things that walk, but I don't have sex with all of them.  And, to top it off, I'm a real person.  I have made and make people feel real things.  I allow myself the same gratification, and understand myself as a human being deeper than most people wish to in a lifetime.  

You're thinking, "Wow!  She's trying to prove that she's morphed her way up the scale of beauty.  Bravo."  But what you're not thinking about is how I'm not done yet.  That shit hurt me, absolutely, and I think about it often.  You said it to my face, in front of people, in my own home-- yet, there's something else that's been a knife in my side, a needle in my eye, a motherfucking shard of glass from your invisible personality that's stuck in my chest.

First Major Ex-Boyfriend Of My High School Best Friend, you hurt her.

You know who her is.

You know how you made her feel, and so do I.  Not because I was always there to watch you call her fat or ugly or stupid, but because I see the results of your terror on her face when she eats too much, in her voice if she asks me whether or not she should buy "this dress," and smell it in the stink of her wavering self-doubt when she makes a reference to herself as anything other than intelligent.

The night you tore her in half with your thin, knobby-knuckled fingers, we were at my cousin's graduation party.  We drank for the first time together out of pop bottles, filled up halfway with rum and 7-Up.  We were around a fire with kids much older than us, feeling fucking cool and actually beautiful for the first time.

Later, she threw up in my aunt's toilet for two hours. Two hours.  I had to hold her hair back while she nearly choked, screaming your name through waves of salt and snot and sadness.  I didn't know how to comfort her, other than pat her back and tell her it was going to be okay.  She was pretty, even then, even with vomit sprinkled around her nostrils and the corners of her mouth.

My cousin drove her home and dropped her off on her front porch, backing out quickly and pretending nothing happened.  We didn't talk about it again, but we didn't need to.

Do you know why I thought of all this, you asshole?  Do you know why I was even inspired to write this worthless letter to you that you will probably never care enough about to read?  Because Jakob Dylan in all his glory, even living in the shadow of his father, created some of the most beautiful harmonies ever in "One Headlight."  And that song was playing today as I did crunches, just as it was blaring out of the black truck parked in my cousin's lawn the night you didn't know you secretly killed somebody by breaking her heart.

And I sing those harmonies.  They make me feel beautiful, like I felt under that fog of summer haze, like I know she did for just a little bit as those older boys looked our way.  I still sing them because it takes me back to a place of naive knowledge and pain that somehow makes one feel alive.  You creep in, though, every time.  Your shadow is in the minor chords.  Your inexplicable anger is beneath each guitar string.

I'm here to tell you that after today, after this is said and done, you won't be allowed back into that place.  I'm taking back the harmonies.  I'm going to sing them and think of the word Ford printed on the tailgate of a vehicle I have never driven, of how around a fire with my best friend at such a confusing, volatile, painful time in our lives, we were actually born and breathing for the first time as women.

You seem happy, FMEBOMHSBF. And if I were inclined, I could pop the illusion with one of your poor decisions.  Instead, I'll let you suffer in your mediocrity and nonchalance, while her and I, I and she, we--

while we hum rhythms and reminisce over yearbooks and paint on mascara and seek full, real, indelible happiness on our quest to become more than shadows.

Goodbye,

Lindsay