Jersey Shore's Sammi and Snooki Would Handle Note Drama Differently: 'You Can't Get Back Those Years' (Exclusive)

Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi and and Sammi "Sweetheart" Giancola are looking back on one of the most iconic Jersey Shore moments with a different perspective.

It's been exactly 13 years since Snooki and Jenni "JWoww" Farley wrote an anonymous note to Sammi to tell her that her boyfriend, fellow Jersey Shore costar Ronnie Ortiz-Magro, was cheating on her.

The note stirred up serious drama among the close group of friends when the episode of the MTV reality series aired back in 2009, including a physical altercation between Sammi and JWoww. But more than a decade later, the women have a much different perspective on the situation.

In PEOPLE's exclusive sneak peek at Thursday's episode of Jersey Shore: Family Vacation, Sammi, Snooki and Angelina Pivarnick have a heart-to-heart discussion about the letter.

Sammi, 36, begins by mentioning how nice it is to be reunited with her former castmates — with whom she had lost touch for many years — and how much she's missed their friendships.

"Honestly, now that I'm here I feel like a part of me has been missing for a while, you know? I feel like I looked at you guys like sisters," she says, later adding in a confessional, "I'm so surprised at how natural it felt to be back. I feel like these people are my family and I just was gone on vacation for a few years."

The conversation quickly shifts when Angelina, 37, brings up the now-infamous note. "I feel like, especially in Miami, me and you didn't leave off bad terms except for, like, the note," she tells Sammi.

The scene then cuts to throwback footage of JWoww dictating the iconic note to Snooki as she typed away at a keyboard. While Sammi did not react well to the letter at the time, she's had a lot of time to think and reflect on it over the years and now she says she's able to "laugh about it."

"I was more upset that it was like, wait, is everybody f---ing with me?" she tells her friends.

Snooki, 35, admits that she regrets how she and JWoww handled the delicate situation with their friend. "If I had to go back, I would tell you to your face," she tells Sammi, who later owns up to her own part in the messy proceedings during a confessional.

"I was 22 and so dramatic back then. If the note happened now, I think I would have handled it a little bit differently," she says.

Sammi then expresses to her friends how much she's grown as a person and what she's since learned that she wishes she knew then.

"I've become the strongest person I can be at this point in my life because of it all. But you can't get back those years," she says. "Time is so short on this earth. Do not freaking waste it over a man if it's not working out."

In confessional, Sammi further opens up about why the note and the cheating revelations about Ronnie made her so emotional all those years ago.

"I thought in my 20s that I had to be married, and find my future husband and like, I'll never find the next love of my life ever again. I was so scared," she recalls. "And now, you kind of accept things for what they are, I think, better now when you're [in your] 30s."

Last month, Sammi spoke to PEOPLE about what it was like to return to her old Jersey Shore stomping grounds — and see ex Ronnie, 37, again after their complicated past.

“I probably wouldn't have came back if I knew he was still on the show, honestly,” she admitted, adding that she hasn’t spoken to her ex in more than a decade.

She said that now that she's in a "loving” and “supporting” relationship with someone else — boyfriend Justin May — and she simply sees Ortiz-Margo as “just some guy I dated in my 20s."

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Jersey Shore: Family Vacation airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. on MTV.