Dear Friend,

I miss you. Despite having been irritated by you, irked by you, frustrated by you and even repulsed by you, I miss you. I look back fondly at our laughs and our connection. Once upon a time I thought you were the most delightful, fantastic person, but like everyone who got to know someone well, we eventually see the sides that we don't like. At that moment we must make a choice. Do we accept their flaws and put aside our judgement, or do we decide that the ugliness of their character overshadow all the beauty? When we choose to accept their flaws, are we doing it because we're afraid to lose a friend? Are we sacrificing our own values? 

But here we are, years later, worlds apart- and I miss you. I want to bridge our distance with words, and I want you to know me, again. I want you to rediscover me the way I have rediscovered you, and grant me the light of your kindness rather than keep me in the shadow of our past.

These days I feel an anxiety, a gnawing seed of anxiousness that tells me there is somewhere else I need to be.The semester is winding down, along with my year as a junior, and the prospect of a summer in Paris beckons. I feel something out there, out of Madison, out of America, and it is calling my name. I hear it whispering promises of fulfilled opportunities. Something, someone, is waiting for me out there and all I have to do is to meet it. I will have a moment, we could have a moment, and it will pass, fleetingly. But it will be okay. Because I will have grown, and that is mine forever. 

I miss my mother, of her nurturing warmth and ready humor. I miss my father, of his unfailing confidence and boundless knowledge. But I lie to them and I deceive them. I am unable to be honest because of their failure to embody one aspect of parenthood, that of unconditional acceptance. But I realize that parents are children too. Mothers and fathers are also daughters and sons, and they deserve the unconditional acceptance to be who they are by the ones who love them. And I love them. I will be the mother and father to the ones I love, and I will be loving and supportive and accepting even when - especially when - they haven't shown it to me. Rather than try to be the child they wished I could be, I will try to be the parent they couldn't be.

Until next time,

Your friend