My friend Ana Anonymous

One of the most difficult challenges I faced was overcoming the loss of my friendship with Ana—a friend who had crawled into my life in the seventh grade and disappeared in my freshman year. Her disappearance had certainly not been the most spontaneous, for she and I had developed an adversarial relationship prior to this occurrence.

When Ana first entered my life, she relieved me of my loneliness; she ironically did so by allowing me to fall into a spiral of avoiding other friends. I genuinely believed that I didn’t need them. I didn’t want their friendships—it was just my trusted friend and I against everyone else. We shared similar interests and habits, as well as fears, flaws and insecurities. We ate our meals together, completed our assignments together, and participated in vigorous aerobic exercises together.

Seconds turned into minutes and minutes turned into hours, and those hours turned into days, and Ana and I continued to aim for perfectionism together. Soon, however, this friendship transformed into rivalry, for we both sought the greatest amount of control and credited our newfound happiness exclusively to that. This rivalry lead to my athletic and academic downfall, as I lost control over myself. Ana dominated and...