Dear Former Sister,

I don’t know why I thought of writing a Christmas letter to you…it’s not like we spent any Christmases together. New Years was more our thing.

Your holidays were spent with your husband and your family. I was sometimes included in a New Years celebration as the proverbial third wheel. I told myself I didn’t mind, but perhaps I really did. I’m not sure if you included me out of pity or out of love, or perhaps a bit of both?

I remember a New Years spent with you and your husband. We went to a comedy show because we both loved comedy. We drank a little and laughed a lot and I refused to dance at the after party. You were upset by this, but I pretended to ignore your feelings, although I knew something was wrong. I should’ve known you loved to dance and danced with you, no matter what a terrible dancer I was, but I just sat there and felt the same level of discomfort that I would’ve felt on the dance floor. Nothing was the same afterwards.

It was a strange way for our friendship to end, given that we met at a salsa dance class. I remember what a natural dancer you were and how much I longed to move the way you did, despite my two left feet. I approached you after class and asked for your phone number. Or did you ask me for mine? I don’t remember. I do remember that I felt happy that night for the first time in a long time.

But I was envious of you and your husband and your outwardly happy life, although I knew that secretly everything was not puppies and rainbows. I came home to an empty apartment for years and you did not, but neither of us were happy. I wished we could have recognized that and developed the cement bond of true friendship, but our relationship was always as precarious as a house without a foundation.

Did you know that I considered you the closest thing to the sister I never had? If I had danced with you that New Years, would you still be in my life or was our dance meant to be over that night?

Merry Christmas and Happy New, dear Sareena. Maybe someday our paths will cross on a different dance floor.