You have always pretty much operated on your own wants and needs; though it took me years to realize that this was true. We made a good pair for a long time in that what one lacked, the other tended to have. We were friends throughout college, pretty close especially because we had work in common. We both were women pioneers in our parts of the newspaper, and both very successful. We liked the same kinds of music, the same kinds of men, and the same kinds of women friends. We shared similar backgrounds in terms of our emotional growth.

When Tim and I broke up in May 93, I called your house and found out that you had just moved back home. You came to visit me and from then on, we were inseparable. You stayed at my house so often my brother's room became "Terri's room." We talked on the phone all the time, went out every weekend, I spent Christmas at your house. We sent each other's parents cards for Mothers' Day and Fathers' Day and birthdays. We tried to look for an apartment together, but I think we knew living together would have been horrible. First, you found a studio apartment and shortly thereafter, I found a place not far away (ironically, I got the phone number and address while we were across the street from your place, buying dinner and wine).

That summer, we spent every weekend at our own special "dog beach," which we discovered on our first Saturday out when we saw a bunch of people with dogs, one guy especially who was gorgeous. They liked our music and we became a regular group.

You got a great job making a good living. I was scraping and suffering through horrible jobs. We commiserated and traded advice and stories. We followed a band around the city on weekends and had lists of funny quotes from our experiences. We spent New Year's Eve in our favorite bar, getting drunk and making jokes.

You began to pull away the next year, when you got busier and more stressed. I wasn't successful enough, I guess, to be shown off to many of your other friends met through work or charity. You began to spend a lot of time with other friends, and I felt abandoned.

When I got engaged for the second time, it just got worse. You never called, never returned calls, accepted my offer of maid of honor but never wanted to do anything with me. I tried to get you to back out after several frustrating months of teary phone calls with our other friends who agreed that you were disappearing from our lives, but you didn't bite. I was stuck.

I heard after my wedding that you told people that my family and I were ungrateful for all that you did for us. What did you do? You never paid my parents for the very expensive couch they sold you for $100 as a favor. You told our friends that you didn't have time to be in the wedding party. You barely tried to get to know my fiancé. You had to be prodded by our friends to throw a bachelorette party - and then never let me copy the negatives so that I see the pictures. After the wedding was over, you were watching the Bulls game in our honeymoon suite - and we couldn't find a nice way to ask you to leave so that we could actually start our honeymoon.

With all that happened and should have but didn't, I miss your friendship. I got tired, as did our other mutual friends, of trying to get you to stay my friend. But after eight years of friendship, what on earth would I do? Just forget about you and all that we shared?

Maybe you just felt better being the more successful friend - professionally, socially, with men - you always did better than me. But now I have a great career and a wonderful husband, and maybe you just didn't want me to have those things before you. I'm sorry if you feel that way. I'm sorry that I couldn't face you when things started to get strange and ask what the hell was going on.

Now I hear that you are back in school, getting your master's degree, and maybe moving in with a new boyfriend. I guess I'm happy for you; I'm trying not to be because our friends think you don't deserve my goodwill. I tried to e-mail you a letter a while ago, asking what happened and if we could just have a beer one day and try to be friends of some kind, but you never wrote back. I wish I didn't care about closure and knowing what went wrong; I know this can't be completely my fault because I'm not the only friend you dumped. Perhaps you thought that, because I was getting married, we couldn't be friends the same way anymore - bullshit!

We had always expected to grow old together and share our lives. We used to talk about the kind of men we would marry, and how our kids would play together. I know I'm not supposed to care about you anymore, and I shouldn't wish that we still had our friendship because it probably wasn't the healthiest. But I'm an optimist at heart and always waited for you to come back after one of your bad moods to share a bottle of wine or a pint of Fudge Brownie.

I'm still waiting, Terri.

Your old friend,

JT