Personal Growth: Recognizing Friendship Is The Purest Form Of Love

Ellen Effy Su. August 4, 2025.

Ben, 

You blocked me on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Pinterest, and Gmail in the summer of 2022. 
You said “Hi” to me in a crowded gym in August of 2023. I didn't know how to respond. I gave an inadequate answer accompanied by my icy, stone-faced blank stare. 

You said a jumble of words, “Hey, I think I've seen you here before, like a few weeks ago, but I didn’t want to come up to you or anything. So, how are you?... That's good.”

Your smile faded when I didn't ask, “How are you?” 

It's quite a drastic difference to the fifteen-year-old me who loudly lied, “What's hair gel?” to you, to say something for the sake of stupidity; for sh-ts and giggles. 

Madame would say, “Quelle idiote,” and I would pretend not to comprehend French, widening my doe eyes to appear clueless. Ask the tour guide in Montréal who met me in 2018, and he would tell you, I know all the words to Beatrice Martin’s songs. Her stage name is Cœur de Pirate (Heart of a Pirate).

We grew up in a similar world, in the same town, but we were never friends because I was jealous of everything you had. Envy truly eats away at your soul.  

I've wanted blue eyes, blonde hair, a happy family, siblings, and a friend group ever since I was seven. It's a side effect of growing up between countries, desiring everything unattainable. 

The ocean eyes I thought were a prize were the same piercing eyes that stared at me in exasperation, frustration, and concern. The eyes I wished my obsidian ones would alternate into were the windows that grew distrustful toward me. 

You were right when you said, “Ellen, you're fifty shades of f-ked up. I don't know how you got to be like this. I don't know why you've changed.” 

You were light positivity, the kind of sunshine affection people expect to receive from their golden retrievers, the second they open their front doors after working a long shift at their stagnant job. 

I have this terrible habit of treating people I love like jewelry. One second, I'm obsessed. Another second, I've forgotten how to be a human. Later, I remember how to be personable and want you back. 

Off and on, up and down, I recognize how difficult it must be to exist around me, in my vicinity. 

You taught me compassion. You showed me empathy. You were sympathetic. You were everything good in this world, a beacon of light to my sea of midnight grey. You taught me life lessons such as being trustworthy, trusting my judgment, standing on moral values, and choosing to be kind instead of right. 

I don't think I was as good a person as you. Maybe I was a psycho who took out all her pain and anger from trauma onto the nearby sponges. 

I wish I had asked you questions. You were a wise, intuitive, calm genius, while I was calculating and meditating with panic attacks every other day. 

You were the only person who tried my terrible “gluten-free, sugar-free brownies” in Vecsi's class in ninth grade. You were good at lying to protect my feelings, even though I did not deserve your generosity. In eighth grade, you read Comf.'s slides off the smartboard for me because I forgot to bring my contact lenses and couldn't see. You went above and beyond for someone you couldn't stand at times. 

You were and continue to be an amazing example of a person I should have embodied. 

I had you as my guiding ray of optimism, yet I couldn't absorb the light. 

What an ironic twist of life for someone whose mother named her after light. 

You deserved better. I apologize for being an infidel friend. 

The memory of you taught me that friendship is the purest form of love, and I should have been loyal, compassionate, patient, and graceful to my dearest friends. I see you in the back of my mind whenever I make the kind choice, not the self-serving one.

All of my enemies started out friends. Who could ever leave me, but who could stay?

Knowing you was an honor. Semper fidelis.