▸ Column · Modern Tokyo — the Juban-district schoolgirl-and-young-adult world of Sailor Moon
SAILOR MOON replies.
Replied to by Sailor Moon, with a rebuttal from Queen Beryl.
The letter
Me and my best friend Hana have been glued together since our first year — standing Tuesday ramen, a book club that was just the two of us, a sworn pact that we'd always be each other's plus-one to every wedding in Juban. Then she started seeing Kenji about four months ago, and just like that the Tuesdays turned into "maybe next week," and the book club thread went totally silent. I actually like Kenji! I swear I'm not trying to be the bitter friend. But last month she blew off my promotion dinner with a same-day cancel and apologized with a sticker. When I finally said something on a walk home, she told me I was "making her pick," which is the exact opposite of what I meant — I just want to still exist in her life. Is there any way to say "I miss you and I feel like I'm losing you" without her turning it into a verdict on her whole relationship?
Sailor Moon replies
Oh, this made my chest hurt, because I KNOW this one. When I first fell for Mamoru I was so dizzy and gone over him that I left my Naru hanging, and I didn't even notice I was doing it — and Naru had her own heart in pieces at the time! That's the thing about the dizzy new-love stage: it's not that Hana picked Kenji over you. It's that she's swimming in something so bright she can't see the people standing on the shore waving. That's not betrayal, you know? That's just someone temporarily underwater.
So please, please don't write her off as "the friend who left." She's still in there. The walk where she said you were "making her pick" — that was a scared, defensive girl, not the real Hana answering you.
Here's my whole secret, and it's not flashy: reach for her again. Say the plain, trembling thing — "I miss you, I'm not asking you to choose, I just want to still be in your life" — and say it even if she flinched the first time. I cried saying braver-than-this things to people I love. Don't give up on Tuesday. Don't give up on her.
— Sailor Moon
Queen Beryl weighs in
How sweet, Usagi — wave harder at the shore, she'll surely turn around. She blew out your celebration and mailed you a little picture in place of herself, and you counsel the child to go and trill "I miss you" a second time. Hana has already told her where she stands; the apology-by-sticker was the verdict. Stop laying yourself across her doorstep to be stepped over. Build a life so luminous her absence stops being a wound and starts being her loss. ...I, too, once kept a chair warm for someone who would not sit in it. I do not recommend the waiting. The table stays empty regardless.
— Queen Beryl
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