A Letter To My Frenemy
By Thoughtis
Hey, girl.
Let me just get this out of the way, right off the bat, because I think we should clear the air: I do not hate you. Sure, I have not really ever liked you–I have been forced by social norms to pretend that you’re cool, sure, but hate has never been a word I would use to describe my feelings towards you. You know as well as I do that there’s this ugly, truly awful part of a woman’s brain that encourages us, no matter how much seething tension we may have between us behind closed doors, to greet each other with a high-pitched “Heyyyyyy” at parties. The fact that we have a lot of friends in common, the fact that it would be weird if we didn’t add each other on Facebook, couldn’t have helped things much.
But I have to hand it to you–you’ve been a worthy opponent. Fine, we can sugar coat it and pretend that it isn’t what it is, but if we’re being honest–we were opponents. We managed to be that scary, evil combination of very similar and in constant proximity. It was Highlander, and there could only be one. We couldn’t both be the social butterflies, we couldn’t both be the center of attention, we couldn’t both be the girl that got invited to boy’s night and girl’s night alike. Every social group only has room for one, at least in our twisted, hyper-competitive minds.
It just sucks that we could never really be happy for each other, that we could never really trust each other, that there was always a Saran Wrap-thin layer of socially acceptable politesse that kept us from stabbing each other in the jugular with a ball-point pen. I can’t count the number of times I said something shitty about you, or that I heard through the grapevine that you hadn’t been so nice about me, either. I once said that your dream was to be in one of those machines that blows cash all around you and you have fifty seconds to stuff it in your pockets and keep as much as you can, only instead of money, it would be full of penises. That was mean. But still kind of funny.
And though I don’t know exactly where the nail went in our coffin, I would say it probably had something to do with when we committed that mortal sin of friendships everywhere: we fought over a love interest. We didn’t just ignore the Chicks Before Dicks Rule, we took it out back, put twenty Uzi rounds into it, burned the remains to ashes, and then Napalmed the entire back yard. And though looking back, we can both admit that the guy was so completely lackluster, at the time, we would have each given a kidney to have him to ourselves. We lost any semblance of dignity for the attention of a guy with a goatee. We have to live with that for the rest of our lives.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, in the end, I have respect for you. Sure, we had a couple drunken moments where the bubbling disdain rose to the top and overflowed, but for the most part we managed to keep it together and at least be nice in each others’ company. The truth is, there is a part of me that is very jealous of you. You have a lot of qualities I hope to see in myself, and some qualities that I definitely know I have in myself, that I absolutely hate. You are a bit of a heart-breaker, you are really socially intelligent, you are really funny. On the most base level, I dislike this because the animal part of my brain wants that alpha status and you are a challenge to it. Emotionally, I have been throwing feces at you.
I really do hope that with time and distance, we will be able to come back to each other and just enjoy each others’ company for what it should be. If you think about it, if we worked together instead of so cruelly separately, we could get so much accomplished. We would make an awesome team if we could just set aside our pride for ten minutes. And I think, as I’m getting older, I am learning how to do that. We’ll see. For now, all I can say is keep being awesome and succeeding at things that I, too, imagine I excel at. Live well and prosper. But if you could gain, like, ten pounds–that would be okay, too.
Love,
Me