(Names of people and places have been changed to prevent getting my head bit off.)

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Open: Memory

Command: Write

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I met her when I moved all the way across the country. She was nothing like the small town kids I was used to, she was outgoing and boasted so people would listen, even though I was smarter than her with most school subjects, I felt insignificant. She bragged that she was related to Hoku and said that she was a black belt in karate and her parents didn't know, because she wasn't supposed to do karate. I didn't believe her, but she made people believe. She was really good at getting people to believe her. I was in awe of her, jealous, or sometimes even hated her. We would fight constantly, and I didn't know who I was anymore. She'd changed me, and I blamed her for it. My anger turned into petty name-calling, saying she was a 'show-off' and when I was in my room alone she was 'a bitch.' I'd never sworn before, I'd been the good kid, and so I blamed her again.

She and I were friends anyway. On-and-off friends, I'd titled us, because I could never remember whether we were fighting or not. She was usually the one to say sorry to me if it was a fight just between us, and I was glad, because I felt I had nothing to apologize for. Otherwise, fights between that group of six we had, always ended up with me jumping from side to side, since she always fought with Annie, and I appreciated the one time where the other four of us broke off from them so we didn't have to fight. It hurt when they made fun of me, because that had never happened to me before, because I was the good kid from upstate New York, from nowhere.

Somewhere in the middle of the year I started Tae Kwan Do, and I realized that her show-off moves were not in proper form, even though I knew Karate and Tae Kwan Do were different. Her kicks left her unbalanced, and so soon enough when she showed off I did too. I couldn't kick higher then, but my kicks were sharper, and I won quite a few arguments by merely showing her that I knew about her lies. I didn't really have my own computer then, either, so we only argued during school. That was when I first got calls from friends, when we moved, and I wasn't used to it. They talked about gossip mostly, and I felt cruel to talk about things like who was going out with whom and who dressed like a slut.

I felt like I was doing something wrong.

I didn't want to feel relieved when we heard we were leaving again. I knew that was a cruel thought, because the rest of my friends had been really nice to me. They accepted the fact that I was a good kid, but she and Annie hadn't. Annie started hanging out with the older kids and asked if I wanted to as well, and I tried, but I didn't like them. Eventually, they'd asked me to come to "the swings" once, and my dad's best friend's son and his friends had invited me to play soccer. It was then that I had to choose, and Annie made is seem like this simple choice for recess was deciding our whole friendship, and the older kids were looking really expectant, as if this was an initiation that happened all the time. I wondered if Annie had taken it, the initiation, and what she'd had to do.

I played one amazing soccer game.

So leaving was only sad for them, even though I tried really hard to remember the good things about the place. I pretended that Irmin would be my favorite place that I'd live in my time, but it wasn't. I didn't like it, it was too big and too loud and too cruel. I was still a small-town kid at heart, though my accent proved otherwise when I moved to Ithat. In fact, it took me two weeks longer than it usually did to get friends there. And once again, I blamed her, because she was automatically the source of all my problems, because she changed me. Moving away I kept contact with her, though, because I got a nice computer in my room, and she had an instant messenger and so we talked, and argued. We would be friends and then she'd say something about me right there online, and I'd tell my mother and then we'd stop talking, until the next day or a week later a message would pop up from her saying 'sorry' or something like that.

We used to speak a lot of Japanese to one another, back and forth, she knew words that I didn't and I knew words that she didn't. It was a competition, until one day she decided Japanese was kiddish to speak and asked me not to say 'hai' to her anymore, or 'konnichiwa'. She refused to say anything in Japanese and one time when I made a mistake and said something she got angry and we fought again. She acted as if I wasn't growing up, as if I was some little girl she used to play Barbies with. Which was, essentially, a lie, because I'd stopped playing with Barbies a year before I'd come across country, losing a good friend because of it. She'd tell me about her "new" life, all the things that were happening to here.

She got popular. I didn't, instead I got a really good friend, Rach, and she and I would talk about real things, and I changed. Slowly enough, I had my good kid personality back, though that didn't last too long. She got mad at me, over and over, and I would say emotionless things back to her, so her drama-queen self would think I was holding back tears and would apologize. It worked every time, because she had this image of me, small- town girl, the one who could be used as a journal to spill all of her comments to. She'd gotten new friends that she'd boast to me about, and I only had Rach, and I could tell she was trying to make me feel inferior. Maybe she didn't even mean it, but I felt it, and I didn't care if she didn't mean it. In fact, I often told her things like that, that I 'didn't want to hear about her' and sometimes I got rude. I'd complain about her to Rach, who would in turn ask why I was still this girl's friend.

I didn't know myself. I hated her, but every time we fought I was waiting for her to apologize, always confident that we would make up.

And then there was the time we didn't. I don't remember what the fight had started from, as I don't remember where many of them came from. All I know is, I was extremely impassive to her criticism, and instead of trying to stop the fight I let her have it. I eventually was yelling, or as much as you can yell online, and then I blocked her. I didn't block her for long, but I didn't talk to her. She tried to apologize a little bit after, but I was still angry with her, and said some hideous things. So she and I stopped talking.

Three or four months later, I messaged her asking, "Do you hate me?" It was many hours later that she replied, but I'd still been on. "Yes." That was it, that's all she said. I tried asking why, but by then she'd signed off. It's been silence ever since.

I can't say I don't regret breaking our ties, because I do. Everyday I wonder whether we'd still be friends if I'd done this or that, instead of sending so much hate her way. She'd even been having depressions problems the month before, and often seemed suicidal, and got really angry when I tried to give her advice. But after a while, I was glad we weren't friends. It was the first time I could talk and say 'ex-friend', and it made me feel important. Rach was proud that I'd finally broken ties with her, though I'm pretty sure it was because of all the complaining I'd done. This was my second year in Ithat, so I had more friends and they all knew about her.

I'll always miss her, and I'm sure some strange reunion of all of us six will come to pass, and we'll meet up again, but we won't be friends. I'm not really friends with any of them anymore, we never talk, and I'm pretty sure we've all just broken apart and changed. I never thought the hard long distance relationships applied to friendships, but now I know they do. As I said, I'll always miss her, but I'll never like her anymore, never yearn to here her bickering about this girl or her fawning comments over her boyfriend or the fact she couldn't remember the name of someone who had come up and talked to her because she was popular and "didn't want to be." No, those are all just memories that I barely remember, that I don't even know all the facts to, memories that when I look over this and my journal entries filled with words on her, will resurface just for a few minutes.

And then, I'll get a call from one of my new friends asking to come over, and I'll leave my journal open on the floor. All on its own, it means nothing to those who would stop and read it. All on its own, those memories mean nothing at all, and that's how fast they'll fade away from me, when I grow older and move on, when I stop living in the past and start thinking of the future. Maybe it will happen tomorrow, maybe it will happens years and years from now, but I know it will happen. I can feel it deep in my heart that I'll finally be able to move on with my life, never have to see her or talk to her or have her rely on me. That one last pressure will be gone.