Growing Apart
It’s odd, I still feel more or less the same way about you.
It’s been nearly a year, yet my eyes still catch on you for an extra second.
I still want to listen to your rants about things I don’t care about.
I still want to follow after you and try to blend into the background.
I still itch to help you when you reach out.
I shouldn’t. I know that.
The only time you talk to me is when you need something.
Small things now, answers, someone to stay with you until your real friends get there.
“Isn’t she your best friend?”
I shouldn’t have looked up, waiting to hear your reply.
I know it’s not me anymore, if it even ever was.
I always seemed to be second place.
But oh, how I wanted to be first, even if only for a second.
You said that we wouldn’t have survived without each other.
I think about that again and again.
You could have meant that in very different ways.
I still remember when that happened.
I still remember how useless I was.
How guilty I felt.
I promise I tried.
Even if I wasn’t ever good enough to be first, I always tried.
You were always first to me. My only, my standard, my safeplace.
Though I guess neither of us were very helpful to one another.
You provided me with a brick wall to escape the gunfire, but I was dealing with a bomb overhead.
I think we both were.
We grew apart, I know that.
But I never anticipated the growing pains as my eyes begin to adjust and gloss over you just a little quicker than before, but still always stopping.
I feel like a fool, you warned me afterall.
You told me this would happen, yet I still expected it to be different.
I’m happy now. I think you are too. But my mind always drifts to hypotheticals.
If we had stayed friends. If I had followed you. Sometimes I still want to, but I doubt you would have me.
I changed your contact finally. Your name with the lone period after it irks me.
Because I want to pretend like nothing has changed.
But in the end, I don’t really miss you, I just hate change.
There is no hole, no blank space. Your absence doesn’t ache the way I thought it would.
It’s just a spot that I vaguely recall having something there at one point.
I hope wherever you are now, despite anything and everything, you’re happy.
