Letter #3 To My Best Friend

Dear Neha,

Something makes me feel like we both decided to write letters to friends and teachers in high school, and then realized we both had the same idea at the same time. That feels like something that would happen to our high school selves. You make a really good point about those letters being a goodbye; for a lot of people I think it was a goodbye to the relationship I had with them in high school, although for those that I stayed in touch with the relationship has simply developed into something adjacent. But for you I was maybe somehow sure that it wasn’t school that held our relationship together, and I also don’t know what I would have written. I also tried, but the attempt was so short-lived because everything I wrote immediately trivialized everything. One thing I like about ambiguity is that it’s easier to maintain grandiosity that way. (We will have to tell our readers about the tolerance for ambiguity stuff some day.)

Anyways, I can’t believe you’ve thought about vlogging at 65. This feels like a random thought that probably doesn’t check out: what if the ‘end’ of your relationship with someone is actually the middle? That might mean we have to change the definition of relationship to be when someone impacts your thoughts/actions/ideas/feelings, and if it takes you just as long to get over them as it did to get to know them then maybe the breakup is the middle. I love what you said Dr. Jay said about relationship ends being inconsequential, and maybe it’s because they’re actually middles, and we still have lots to learn…