I should have just let you go completely. I should have just completely detached myself from you. I should have just really cut you out of my life. But I was weak. I was foolish. I was stupid. I still wanted to cling to you in whatever capacity I could; and little did I know that it would end up hurting me more than I could have ever imagined. It was just too tempting. I couldn’t resist. I didn’t want to let go of you entirely. I didn’t want to just erase all traces of your existence. I still needed to feel you somehow; to interact with you.
I still needed you to be there. I still wanted you to be near me; to be within reach. And so I think that’s probably why I decided to just give in. My whole thinking was centering around the logic that being friends with you would be better than not having you in my life at all. I had it all planned out in my head; as if I had given so much thought to it. I was so tempted with the idea of still being able to text you whenever I wanted to be updated on your life.
I was so enticed with the thought of being able to see you whenever I wanted without it being awkward or weird. I was so caught up with the allure of being able to keep you within my little bubble; of having you still be a part of my world. I considered all of these things to be potential benefits to keeping you as a friend in my life. I thought that these were all promising alternatives to just letting you go. I thought that I would never be able to handle the pain of losing you.
It’s only now that I’m realizing just how wrong I was for thinking that way. It’s only now that I’m starting to understand why you can never really go back to being friends once you’ve been in too deep with one another. I know now that I should have just walked away and burned that bridge. I know now that it hurt so much more to have you so close and yet not have you in the way that I really wanted to have you. I was dying on the inside every single time that you told me that you had plans.
It killed me to know that you had plans – and those plans had absolutely nothing to do with me. It killed me to know that had a whole life of your own that didn’t include me in any capacity; even though to me, you were still my whole world. I was dying on the inside every time I thought of you going out with another girl. It killed me to think of the possibility that she was making you a million times happier than I ever did. I know that it shouldn’t have been any of my business anymore.
I know that I didn’t have the right to be so invested in your life at that point. But I couldn’t help myself. You game me a hand, and I wanted the whole arm. You have me an inch, but I wanted the whole mile. Yes, we labeled ourselves as friends but why was it that it was only me who was hurting on the inside? Why didn’t I feel that much pain in all of my other friendships? Why couldn’t I ever be comfortable with you in the way that I was with other friends? It always felt okay for me to ask and inquire about the lives of my other friends.
But somehow, it just felt really awkward and weird with you. I somehow didn’t want to give you the idea that I was still obsessing over you – even though the truth is that I really was. I was obsessing over you; and you never obsess over someone who is just a friend.I was always so free to just laugh and joke around with my other friends; but somehow, I never felt like our situation was ever a funny one. In fact, I felt a lot of pain, darkness, and sorrow. I felt a lot of sadness.
And these typically aren’t things that you feel with a friend on a perpetual basis. These aren’t necessarily things that you would be experiencing in a normal friendship. And that’s because we didn’t have a normal friendship. I still wanted you to be more than just my friend – and having you so close to me kept me from moving on. Having you right there in front of me made it so hard for me to move on from what we once were. I couldn’t get back to a place of health because I was still in so much pain.
