An old friend who I stopped speaking with last year suddenly e-mailed me an apology today. She said I was a true friend, and she said she was sorry that she got so upset with me after a senseless comment I made to her last year, which she took extreme offense to and overreacted about. As soon as I realized she was being hypersensitive and neurotic, I stopped talking to her and told her why. At that point in my life, I couldn’t handle having any more people in my life who I had to walk around egg shells to be around, or who were just extremely negative.

In a past version of myself, I might have obsessed over this e-mail and wondered why she sent it, what prompted her to write me, why she was even thinking about me after so much time had passed. But in the current version of me, I really felt little to nothing. I’ve stopped caring about things as much as I used to, especially things that are just insignificant or dramatic without reason. However, there is one point she made in her message that I read twice: “One of your greatest assets is that you are not superficial.” She said I was one of the most real people she’s ever met. We live in a world where we’re always wondering who’s actually authentic and who’s fake. My cynical (yet realistic) side thinks that most people are either fake or just not the type of people I want to be around, perhaps because their values in life so greatly clash with mine. But it’s comforting to know that someone who I am pretty much at odds with now admits that I’m authentic, and superficiality isn’t something I value at all.