Open Letter To A Friend

I truly thought you were one of my best friends, one of the few people that understood me, at least to some degree. Turns out you had me fooled all along.
I never thought you, of all people, would be the one to do this to me, to toss me aside like last week's newspaper. Somehow you tricked me into fighting for you, and having your back every step of the way. You tricked me, and I can't state enough how much of a fool you made me feel, when I realized that you had tricked me into loving you. You tricked me not only into loving you, but into genuinely and completely caring about you, and, against all my better judgement, into standing firm in supporting you. You made me believe that we were meant to be friends, for now, and forever. In reality, you needed me, you needed someone with an insiders' perspective on what you were dealing with, and now that you no longer need me, now that you have the support of so many others, I've fallen out of fashion. The worst part is, I trusted you, for the first time in years, I wholeheartedly trusted someone other than myself, and I allowed myself to believe that I mattered to you. Perhaps that's too harsh, I know I mattered to you, but I allowed myself to believe it was for reasons other than you needing my support. I allowed myself to believe that our friendship extended beyond the convenience of my prior friendships and all the ways they could benefit you. From this point on, I will no longer expect anyone to be able to understand me to the extent I felt you did. And from this point on, I'm not bearing my true self to any one person. No, instead of confiding in one person, as I did with you, and allowing that person to destroy my psyche when they tell the world my secrets, or cut me out of the picture with no prior warning, I'm just going to cut out the middle man and bear my true self to the world. I guess I should thank you. Thank you for reaffirming my beliefs in the complete failures of humanity, and thank you for reaffirming my cynicism. I love you.