Trigger Warning: Discussion of emotional abuse; Misogynist language (“friendzone”)
—
His letter really ought to piss her off. He’s overreacting, taking his defensiveness for his own actions out on her, and at the end, he just gets downright rude.
But reading his letter the first time through, all she can feel is relief. Because he is appalled that she would think he believes himself entitled to a relationship. Because he values his friendship with this girl over a potential relationship. And that means he doesn’t actually believe in the “friendzone” he talked about last letter. And that means —
He’s not like Gavin.
It’s that thought, those words, that bring the wave of relief washing over her, the release of the tension and anxiety she’s been carrying around since his last letter.
He’s not like Gavin. Basically, I’m the poster child for the friendzone is not going to turn into Are you friendzoning me? Are you seriously fucking friendzoning me? Alex isn’t going to put another girl through the same hell Zoe was put through. And most importantly, she hasn’t been wrong about him, and that is the best feeling in the world right now.
She picks his letter up from her desktop where it fell in her onslaught of relief and reads it again. This time, it does piss her off. There was really no cause for him to get this angry with her. No one likes being called out and corrected, she gets that, but sometimes staying quiet makes you complicit, and she refuses to be complicit on this issue. Besides, she never said he was that kind of asshole; she said she hoped he wasn’t.
And even if he was angry at her for that, it’s no excuse for being so short-tempered and snippy in the rest of his letter, especially when answering the questions she knows she said were extra silly to lighten the mood. Honestly, if he was that angry, he should have waited to write until he had calmed down
Advice you could have taken to heart, if I’m remembering your last letter, Zo, the voice of reason chastises lightly. Zoe lowers her hackles a bit, chagrined.
Okay, she acknowledges, I’m not without fault. And I’ll own up to that, but I still don’t have to just let him twist my words and push me around. I’m done with that.
She writes his reply right then and there. She acknowledges her own fault, but she also calls him out on his shit in no uncertain terms, then suggests they both cool down before they continue writing, so that they can continue writing rather than lose the letters over this one, relatively small argument. She’s not writing angry this time, she’s writing empowered, because he’s not Gavin, so they can get past this. And, she realizes upon completion, she’s not freshman-year Zoe, cowed into submission by people like Gavin.
She’s so full of this empowerment (spurred on by the exhilarating reality that she’s been thinking about Gavin so specifically and hasn’t spiraled into a panic attack) that she needs to do something with it, so she turns to a new page in her notebook and starts writing.
Not-Dear-At-All Douchebag. You have some things of mine and I want them back. Two years ago, you took my confidence, my peace of mind, and a huge chunk of my sense of self worth, and it’s time for you to cough them up.
This was an exercise her counselor freshman year had suggested that she had never followed through on because she didn’t know what it would do to her. Today, though, she feels more than ready to take it on.
I used to think that when I wrote this letter, I’d have to acknowledge my own fault, that I’d have to own up to the idea that I let you have those things, but you know what? I didn’t. You took them from me, you stole them from me, and I am done taking the blame for your actions.
Today, I’m officially taking all those things back. You don’t get to keep them anymore. They are mine, and I am 100% reclaiming them. But don’t worry — I know one of your biggest fears is being left empty-handed, so let me give you some things in return.
I’m giving back the guilt and fear and paranoia and torment. I’m giving back the constant anxiety and the panic attacks and the nightmares. I’m giving back your ugly words and your threats against my friends, the insults scratched into my locker and the nights you stood outside my bedroom at two am. Those things are all yours. I refuse to hold onto them any longer.
To answer your question from two years ago, no, asshole. I’m not “fucking friendzoning” you, because the “friendzone” doesn’t exist. I’m done letting that word affect me, and I’m done letting you affect me.
I’m taking back what’s mine, and I’m leaving you what’s yours. You have no more power over me, so stick that in your juice box and suck it.
Never Yours,
Zoe Elisabeth Ballard
She’s breathless when she finishes writing, breathless and exhilarated. She can feel two years of stress and underlying, lowkey anxiety just melting away. Even though she has long since moved past the point where Gavin is a constant, overwhelming presence in her life, he’s never left the back of her mind. Now, it almost feels like he has.
There’s a rapping from her door, and she turns around to see her mom poking her head in. “Knock, knock.”
“Hey, Mom.”
“Mind if I come in?”
Zoe shakes her head, and her mom slips in, shutting the door behind her, and takes a seat on Zoe’s bed. Zoe spins slowly in her desk chair to face her, tucking one leg up on the seat. “What’s up?” she asks, though she thinks she already knows.
“I just wanted to touch base,” her mom says. “You’ve seemed a little tense the past few days. You know you don’t have to talk about anything if you don’t want to, but I wanted to make sure things were all right. If it’s just about Thom, then . . .” She trails off, letting Zoe fill in the end of the statement for herself, and Zoe nods, eyes on the floor.
“No, it’s been . . .” She takes a deep breath. “Alex, the guy I’ve been writing to, he . . . he used a trigger in his last letter. He talked about being in the, you know, friendzone with this girl he knows.” Her mom’s reaction is immediate.
“Zoe,” she says, reaching out a hand and laying it on Zoe’s arm. When Zoe looks up, her mom’s eyes match her voice — full of concern. “You should have said something. Are you all right?”
Zoe looks at her mom’s hand on her arm and is just hit with a wave of emotion, love and gratitude and how did I get so lucky? So she shakes her head and meets her mom’s eye and lets her exhilaration come through.
“Mom, that’s the thing. I’ve been tense because I called him out on using the term and I’ve been worried about how he would respond, but that’s the only reason. It reminded me of Gavin, I’ve been thinking about Gavin, but I haven’t been obsessing. I didn’t relive anything. A year ago, I would have. But I didn’t. No nightmares, no panic attacks — he used a trigger, but it didn’t trigger anything.”
The look that comes across her mom’s face exactly mirrors the feeling filling up Zoe’s chest — elation, pride, massive relief. They both have tears in their eyes — Zoe gets her emotional side from her mom, for sure — and after a second, they both laugh a little.
“Well, good,” her mom says with a shake of the head and a voice that only wavers a little. “I’m thrilled to hear that, Zo.”
“I’m thrilled to be able to say it,” Zoe says earnestly. “I — I wrote this. Dr. Christie suggested it, but I wasn’t able to do it last year.” Shyly almost, she offers the letter she just wrote. Her mom takes it with a gentle hand and reads it quickly.
“‘Stick that in your juice box and suck it’?” she asks wryly, with an arched eyebrow, when she reaches the end. Zoe grins.
“I stand by that,” she says. Her mom laughs.
“What are you going to do with the letter?” she asks, and Zoe knows it isn’t a throwaway question, that there’s a second question underneath.
“Send it to the Dead Letter office,” Zoe assures her mom. “I have no desire to actually send it to him. I mean, on some level I do, because I want to be able to say what I couldn’t then, but I know it wouldn’t make a difference, and it would mean seeking him out and seeing him, which I don’t want in any way. But I needed to say it. I needed that closure.”
Her mom seems satisfied with that answer. She hands the letter back to Zoe. “Have you heard back from Alex?”
“Yeah,” she says, the word coming out on a sigh. “Today. And he’s not that guy. He misused the term, but he’s a good guy.”
“I’m glad. And I’m glad you’ve squared things away.”
“Oh, we haven’t, he’s being a massive butt right now,” Zoe responds, rolling her eyes and biting back a sigh. But then she smiles. “But I can handle it.” Her mom laughs a little.
“I know you can. You should email Dr. Christie, too. She likes to hear success stories.”
Zoe nods. “I think I will. And . . .” She hesitates, then takes a deep breath and pushes through. “I’d like Thom’s address.”
Her mom’s eyebrows shoot up at that. “You would?” she asks.
“Seriously, Mom, I feel like I could take on the world right now.”
“Clearly,” her mom says with a little laugh. “You want to talk to Thom.”
“I want to write to Thom,” Zoe clarifies. “One letter. I want to ask him not to contact me again. I don’t want to get to know him, I don’t want to hear what he has to say, I don’t want him to be part of my life.”
She watches her mom carefully. Her mom looks down, mouth tight like she’s holding something back. Then she sighs and looks back up. “Okay,” she says, and Zoe appreciates that she doesn’t make it sound like there’s more she wants to say (even though she knows there is).
“It’s gonna make me care, isn’t it?” she asks softly. “Whatever he wants to tell me.”
Her mom hesitates for a moment, then says, “Yes.”
“I don’t want to care. I know that’s selfish, but–”
“It’s not selfish, Zo,” her mom says softly with a gentle hand on her arm. Then she sighs, her face lined and trouble. “I will respect what you want. And I think Thom will, too. But the situation . . . it’s bigger than that. I don’t know that you’ll be able to avoid it, despite what you want.”
Zoe chews her lip. “Then . . . I’ll cross that bridge if I come to it. But for now, this is my choice.”
Her mom nods. “And you deserve to make the choice that you feel is best for you. But you know you can come to me if you change your mind, okay? And you know whatever happens, I’m your number one cheerleader, right?”
“Joe might want to fight you on that.”
“Let him, I can kick his ass.”
Zoe laughs through the tears that have sprung to her eyes. “I love you, Mom.”
“I love you too, Zo. And I’m so proud of you.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty proud of me, too.” Her mom laughs and leans forward to kiss Zoe on the cheek.
Once her mom has gone back downstairs, she turns back to the two letters on her desk. Without rereading them, she folds them and sticks them into two envelopes. On one she writes Alex’s name as usual. On the other, she writes, The Biggest Douchebag in the World, ℅ the Dead Letter Office with apologies to the postal worker who has to deal with this, but I needed the catharsis, please have a wonderful day.
Looking at the envelope after it’s addressed, she does something she never thought she’d be able to do with something related to Gavin. She laughs. Dr. Christie was right, she thinks. Healing does happen eventually.