I worry about having a friend.
The discomfort of depending on them.
The discomfort of relying on their presence to complete conversations you do not want to have alone.
I can wait for years just to complete that conversation.
The conversation waits within me.
The grief holds itself carefully inside me.
The pain stays safely stored in my heart, waiting for its release.
Is my friend the place where I seek redemption?
It started as nothing, and somehow became everything.
In a world obsessed with defining love through the physical, this platonic crush became my holy grail for peace and fun.
The urge to talk to them in the group while still remaining courteous.
You cannot reveal that every conversation quietly seeks their emotional validation.
The subchat.
The side group.
The secret extra details.
The expressions you need to share with them before the day can end peacefully.
I stay with the comma until I talk to them, and they become the period of peace.
They turn the page for me.
I did not know that my urge to add subtitles to every conversation was the kind of love I needed during this mundane life.
Subtitles only they would understand.
Subtitles you cannot say out loud, because others would notice.
Love holds very little power when it comes to overly territorial friendships.
You cannot cross that line.
You cannot come between that bond.
The closeness becomes territorial.
Almost sacred.
Where love sometimes comes with fragility, disturbed as easily as sand touched by waves, friendship feels carved in stone.
Not a handmade carving, but something shaped slowly through time.
Not just what waves do to underground rocks, but what a rope does to a stone wall after years of friction.
Friendship endured what hurt the most.
It saw your friend withering in pain, and still you stayed.
It tests your stamina.
Your appetite for love.
Your ability to remain.
But sometimes, you have to cut this cord yourself.
Untie this seemingly unbreakable knot with your own hands.
To break a friendship, you have to break the stone.
The very stone you carved your promises into.
And while smashing it against the ground would be easier, you still want to be delicate about it.
So instead, you break it on your own feet.
While your friend cries, you bleed.
But you still do it.
Because staying hurts more.
Yes, you will make new friends.
But the piece of heart they took with them stays there forever.
And eventually, you stop hoping to get it back too, because you would not know what to do with that piece even if it returned.
Some memories are not erased.
Only buried.
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