The Ending Doesn't Erase The Story

 

I keep telling myself it was a mistake, a devil in disguise, something that should have never even happened. I try to give myself closure by trying to despise you for not giving more or reaching out. Not because I expected something of the sort from you, but because I know how hurt and angry you feel from that look in your eyes that fills mine with sympathy. I know that I'm not the only one carrying this whole thing. You keep being kept in the dark, bombarded with the weight of words, and then pushed away. I know how hurt you are, and I can't help but care. Care for you. How you're doing. Whether you're ok or not. And that's why I trained myself to despise you, to hate you, to treat it all like a mistake, like it was never meant to be. Because hating you makes moving on easier. Simpler. Less crushing and heavy and suffocating and sad. But it still hurts to see you cry. I still wish I could reach out. I still wish we could just talk things through, fix it, go back to being the platonic friends we were as though nothing happened. But I'm tired. Tired of providing myself with empty promises which you and I both know can't be fulfilled. So I grieve. Grieve our friendship. Grieve the hurt you feel. Grieve the circumstances. Grieve the way life feels when you're by side, hurting, and I can do nothing to reach out. I'm still crying in the corridors and benches and washrooms, sometimes glimpsing at the door, your name lingering on the tip of my tongue. Maybe the reason why I believe that I feel like I feel closure is because I keep telling myself that it's unfixable. And that one thought crushes the little flicker of hope that is left, leaving nothing but the ghost of empty promises behind. Maybe I never left you, because you slip into my thoughts and dreams. I still imagine your reactions to the conversations we never had, the jokes you never got to hear, because nothing can replace you. It's like a void that sits quietly with my thoughts. It's like a bittersweet chamber within, waiting to be opened, yet forced to be sealed. Because I miss you.
I miss our friendship. And yet this is how it all ended. Like a book with tattered pages. Like a piano with broken keys. But the ending doesn't erase the story.