A Letter To An Old Friend

Artwork by Georgia Lynn Dean

Dear Bestie,
I may be a few years too late but I wanted to say thank you. Thank you for the amazing years of friendship that you gave me. Thank you for the thousands of hours spent laughing, crying, or just being a steady breath bringing comfort through the painful silence life sometimes gives us.

It’s through the inability to allow another bond like this in my life that I can acknowledge the magnitude of your presence. It was because of you that I knew absolute good and purity existed in the world. With a brain that can rival any scholar and hands that can heal a broken canvas, I am in awe of who you are.

Your courage -- daring to risk it all to feel oils between your fingertips, witness your soul’s language through brush strokes and dance between the lines of your frame -- is ART. You are the truth we never saw coming. Honest in creation, expression, worship. You chose you and we honor you. “We” because the “me” that was of “us” has fallen into the sea of distant admirers, we stand three to four feet away. I took off my shoes, unshielded my eyes and reverenced myself, I am forever changed.

Accepting my place in the rear view mirror, I suffocate the voice calling out from the shadows. If leaving me in the past was a stepping stone to becoming the glorious manifestation that you are, then I gladly wear my dismissal as a consolation prize. A fallen soldier in the fight to become.

I have never loved another since, a truth I hide with shame, I play my friends like a childish game of yo-yo. Pulling them close and then hurriedly pushing them away. I am afraid. How do you lose a soul sister twice? The possibility of that outcome is enough to keep me in a prison of my own making.

This letter is an admission of weakness and a message of admiration. No longer dreaming with bright eyes shut, shallow breaths and pressed lips hiding the moon’s favorite smile. You are who you said you would be.

I applaud you.

I love you.

I miss you.

I am sorry.

-an old friend.


Artwork by the amazing Georgia Lynn Dean. Here is the beautiful description she sent me with the piece: 

"I created the whole thing with one line because I wanted to show your friendship as that one continuous line, with the mass in the middle representing everything you’ve been through. I also used two colors, red and blue, to show the disconnect you feel. The blue and red represent two things: veins and arteries from old medical diagrams of hearts, and the old style 3d glasses. The heart is important because it has a seriousness and of course, the heart also represents love. The tones also call to mind 3d glasses, which I thought would reflect the slight disjointedness that comes when you fall away from someone who was a really great friend."