A letter to my Roo.

First off, I need to say that I love you and I still consider you my best friend for forever and a million years. We are going to be old ladies together laughing about the same dumb shit we laugh about now. That hasn't changed, isn't changed, and never will change. I will never have a friend like you or that will be able to replace you or be able to mean to me what you mean to me. We're a special breed you know, not many people make it through middle school, high school, and college and still have the same best friend through all of that.

But I know we've both been ignoring the big elephant in the room recently. I didn't know how to talk about it, nor did I really want to talk about it because it's a hard conversation to have. How do you tell your best friend that you've lived with for three years in college that you aren't going to live with her anymore? It has absolutely nothing to do with not liking you or not wanting to be around you or anything like that. But we are at two different places in our lives, different places that making living together more difficult. You have a serious boyfriend who you want to spend a lot of time with, I understand that. But like I've mentioned in other years, I don't want to spend that much time with him. Spending time with you and him is not the same as spending time with you. YOU are my friend, I'm friends with him in whatever way I am because I love you. But that doesn't mean I want to see him four times a week and get to see you only Mondays through Thursdays. It doesn't mean I want to share an apartment meant for four with five people for over half of the week.

I haven't felt like I could talk to you about these things, because every year I've tried and it hasn't changed anything. So I gave up. And I just started doing my own thing and ignoring the situation. I know you've noticed, and I know that may have not been the best thing to do. But I felt defeated and I didn't know what else to do.

I knew this was going to be hard, it's hard for me to think of not living with you either. I feel lonely too. But I felt like if I tried to do another year, it was going to start to actually hurt our friendship. And I can't bear for that to happen...I couldn't take it if it did. I love you and I miss you, but I don't want to force you to change your situation because it is different than mine. Wherever I'm living, because I truthfully don't know at this point yet either, I want you to come over all the time. I want to have afternoons where we just hang out and watch movies and eat. I want to go on gym dates. I know not living together will be weird, but it won't be the end of life, you know?

I had to tell myself that, because it was a hard decision for me to make. But you know what? We're both growing into beautifully confident women and functioning members of society, and no matter who we live with, we will always have each other to fall back on when we stumble, lean on when we get tired, and run away to when we need a break, and giggle with when we're just feeling too silly to be with anyone else. You know that you can come to me at any hour of the day, whether it be a phone call, a text message, an email, or a knock on my door, and I will be there for you and I will do my best to help you with whatever it is you need me for. And I'm still confident that you would do the same. And that is a better deal than a lot of people in this world have, so I think we're pretty gosh dang lucky.

I haven't given up, I haven't let go, I just stepped back to focus on things for myself for a while. But I didn't want you to get the wrong message from that. I love you and I want what's best for you, and even though it's hard, I really think this is going to be best for both of us. We've made it through a lot of things that people said we wouldn't, I think we will be okay for this one too.

<3