v a n i s h i n g

Next weekend will probably be the end of you and me. Our last hurrah before you marry some guy and move away from me, like all my other friends. It's a little saddening, on the one hand; on the other, it is entirely relieving.

When we were young, you were fun. You wore Goodwill clothes and didn't care if your thong hung out of them. You didn't know who Ann Klein was, and you thought that renting a movie, eating brownies, and chugging surrepetitiously-obtained boxes of wine was the best way to spend a night. You didn't judge people. You didn't think you were God's gift.

Then, somehow, I lost you. You got that job with that Senator. You put on your suit and stockings and started buying makeup that costs more than my weekly groceries. You socialize with big names, to whom you mean absolutely nothing. You tell me that my shoes are ugly, my boyfriend is ugly, and really make no qualms that, deep down, you think I am pathetic. Christ, last week, you asked me when I was going to get a "real job." Pumpkin, you make $30,000 a year. Stop judging me.

If these are my true feelings, why am I sad? It's not really the loss of you, so much. Please, take your stuff and go on with your life. I'm sad because you're the last one; the last of the close college group to run off on me. Not all of them are married now, but all but I have moved away, on to their grown-up lives and fairytale endings in faraway places. This time next month, it's all up to me. Who will fill the void?