hello.

dear friend,

how are you? i hope you and the family are all well.

it's funny. we don't live that far apart but ever since our fall-out, i haven't seen you at all. not even bumped into you anywhere. i've bumped into way more random people, but not you.

it's been a few years but i there are times when i find myself thinking about you. how different our lives are now and how we would be spending our time together now if we were still talking to each other. i'd see something somewhere and immediately, i think "oh, you would love this."

i know a lot of people think back about their past and say they wouldn't change a thing. with you, i think there are things that i probably would've done differently- gentler words, softer actions. i felt like there was a separation between the real you and the you that i knew. i still don't understand it, or your actions back then - i'm still as painfully honest as i was back then, and you're probably still as mysterious as you've always been, but i probably would've dealt with our situation a little more maturity.


you and i are both mothers to little girls now; how insane is that? i remember that we used to say that one day, we'd find a house near each other and our little ones have fun together. we would build cool treehouses, wings and we'd fill their rooms with lots and lots of books.

it would be so much easier if i could just move on and pretend you don't exist anymore. but that's the sad part; you really don't exist in my life anymore. we're only separated by a little distance and common acquaintances; but we're really just strangers to each other now. we don't have any current memories - and i've built lots of great new friendships since the demise of ours - but they're not what we had. it was a strange, comforting connection,; and it still baffles me til this day.

we shared so much of each other's lives. sure, we had our major differences, but at the same time, we we each other's confidantes and we understood each other's dilemmas. how do i leave you behind in the past, when a part of you is always with me? how do i erase all those moments we sat by the beach, looking at waves and thinking how cool it would be if we could build our future houses right there next to each other? how do you forget all those long conversations we had while driving through the roads of our hometown?

you and me; we're lucky. we found love; within our partners and these little bundles of joy that Allah blessed us with. whatever has happened in our past, we can learn from and try to make our future better. we can make our families different from what we've always known.

i miss you. i'm writing all these thoughts down in a letter that i'll never send to you - but at least i'm putting these feelings into words. one day, maybe i'll look back at this letter and smile. maybe one day things will be different again; in a good way.