This Is The Last I Will Say About It

Dear Friend (or not),

I was almost over the fact that you have somehow, some-reason, unfriended me for some mysterious reason. I had decided that your shunning of me was something I wasn't going to worry about. Then, yesterday, when I was in a second grade class for the morning, you walked through the back of the open classroom with your little K kids, who I adore and who still run over to hug me in the hallway and ask why they never see me anymore, on their way to lunch, and out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw you smile at me. One of the other K teachers called over to me, 'I like your new shirt!' Just like that, I had hope: hope that maybe your home internet is down, hope that you haven't checked your email, hope that my hurt feelings were for nothing, hope that you just wanted to talk to me in person rather than respond via email. Despite my claims that I was OK with whatever had happened, my heart lifted a mile.

I came home, and, like a dorky puppy, forwarded my original email to your school address, with a small note a the top saying that I felt like a nerd, but that I wanted to be sure that you had received it, and that you weren't sitting over there being furiously silent with me for some reason. I sent it with a hope hiding under a quilt of my hurt feelings and rejected friendship in my heart.

I know you received it. Yet, you still choose not to respond, despite my repeated attempts to make right whatever you feel is wronged, in the face of my statement that you are, in fact, one of the people I chose to model my professional life by, and that your opinion is oh so important to me. It has been a whole day, which is too long in the realm of please-respond-I-care-about-you sadness to assume anything but the most hurtful option is true. You have written me off, completely and finally.

I don't know what I've done, but I can tell you what you've done.

You have crushed the confidence I felt in the classrooms of the school where you work. I no longer know who is trustworthy, or who may be saying what about me - what *you* may be saying about me - when I am there. For that matter, I don't know if someone has told you something untrue about me. You have made me question my judgement in choosing friends; obviously, I cannot tell the difference when someone is lying to me about being 'so happy that we've met', when someone truly values my opinion, and when they really just need me because they need someone to fill out their endless graduate school term paper questionnaires. You have made me feel stupid, and used, and a little unlikable. You were my model to emulate; what does it say when your model thinks that you're so expendable? What does is say that I have picked someone like you to emulate? Your silence has disrespected me to the bone.

When I pick friends, I am essentially picking family. I know you had a great life, family-wise, but I didn't, and ever since I can remember I have been cobbling together an extended family with whom I can laugh and share memories. It means something to me. I would do anything for the people I call friend, including answering all their questionnaires because they 'need help, asap'. I have never purposefully hurt anyone, and whenever I have had a misunderstanding, I have always tried my hardest to iron it out. From this, I have learned that I need to be more careful about who I trust, still, even though we are all supposed to be adults. I have learned that 'adult' isn't as adult as I had hoped it would be.

You have made me so, so sad, on so many levels. This probably won't be the last time I feel hurt over this, because I will see you every day at the school, either at pick-up or because I'm working there, but it *will* be the last time I allow myself to grieve over it. You are done occupying my mind, and your place in my heart will go to someone else.

Sincerely,
Astarte