BFF...not

I was going through some stuff tonight as I was packing and came across this notebook that my best friend from Jr. high/high school and I kept. We would write notes in it to one another and trade it back and forth between classes. I took some time to read through it and it brought a lot of stuff up.

Kim and I were inseparable from the 7th grade until just before our sophomore year. We were ridiculously close. If she wasn't at my house, I was at hers. If we weren't together, we were on the phone. I was closer to her than I was to my sisters at that point. Then, just before our sophomore year started, I'm talking like the day before, she just stopped talking to me. That was it. She never said two words to me again. One day we were joined at the hip and the next she didn't look at me, didn't even acknowledge that I was alive. 

Since then all of my girlfriends have had to bear the burden of that relationship. I have a hard time trusting girlfriends, I feel threatened when they form other friendships, etc.  I don't think that I ever got over that incredibly painful loss. There was a time earlier this year that I was feeling "threatened" and my friend looked at me and said: "Kristen. I am not Kim Luce. Please don't punish me for what she did." WOW. That hit a nerve, to say the least. 

So what I had decided to do tonight was go to the last page of this notebook and "write" Kim a note and just kind of rid myself of all the hurt and anger I still have buried down deep. I was looking forward to it and dreading it all at the same time. Instead, I decided to look for her on Facebook. There she was. She looks almost exactly the same. She's married now. (Of course she is! ) Part of me just wants to write this note and let it go. Part of of me wants to message her. I don't know.  What would be the point? What if she didn't respond? Would that open up a-barely-healed wound all over again? 

How is it that 16 years later this still affects me so profoundly?  Here I am 31 years old, have incredible friends who love me, have lived a pretty amazing life, and yet I am having a physical reaction to seeing her picture and looking through an inane notebook. My heart is racing and I feel queasy. I feel like I am 15 all over again and have lost my best friend for who knows why. 

Do I confront my past head on or deal with it on my own?