The shock of the fall is one way to describe what it felt
like to lose her. It was a swift, sudden, tablecloth whipped out from under plates piled high kind of motion. One moment she was there, the next, she
had vanished. Except this wasn’t a magical trick designed to implore applaud –
it was harsh, and brutal. The plates crashed from the table, you might say. I
made promises to her, and when it mattered most, I let her down. I pushed too
hard and now I’m slowly learning my lesson. I have been left to rethink each
small comment, things that I thought insignificant and easy criticism over
decades of love have fractured and fragmented the most important relationship I
have ever found myself in outside of family bonds. She became family. The lazy
days we spent playing scrabble, over and over we played scrabble – in her back
garden with her uncle, in my front room as I “breathed too heavily” and
distracted her, even on the plane to Spain – these are some of the favourite
moments of my life. She has stood by me through hospital admissions, one time
even figured out I had escaped, called every person close to me and made sure I
was safe – even if from a distance. Even if, deep deep down I know this is for
the best, I miss her incredibly. Every bloody day.
I hope she knows how I love her. I am so happy to have had a
friend that meant so much to me that now I feel utterly numb without her; this
pain must be a testament to how much I cared about us, because I can’t possibly
feel this destroyed without it meaning something. It’s too much to bear. I go
to call her, to tell her about my day and hear her voice of pure joy – and then
I’m jolted back to this reality that she doesn’t care about my day anymore.
Someone said to me, it is like she’s dead now. I was so struck by this, but it
is. I have no choice. I can’t call her. I don’t get to hear her laugh anymore,
make her laugh or have her laugh at me. I look at old photos of us and it truly
hurts as though I’m mourning her. A world without her is something I never
thought I’d face until one of us passed – so that person was maybe more right
than they knew when they said it was like she had died. However bereft, life
carries on. I’m so glad she is alive and well. It is just truly saddening that
I don’t get to be a part of the wonder that was her anymore. We are anecdotal
to each other now, relics of what we once had, and just a sweetheart friendship
gone wrong.
Slowly, so slowly, I’m coming around again to the notion
that I’m not rotten. It wasn’t entirely my fault this happened. It wasn’t
anyone’s fault. It is just one of the saddest stories of life that nothing
lasts forever. I am glad I met her. Maybe our paths will cross again one day,
but for now we navigate the treacherousness of our late twenties separately. I
know it will be much harder without her, and I’m sorry not to have her in my
life. Hopefully, and hopeful – perhaps
foolishly so – that it will all work out. Because eventually, one way or the
other, it just does… But if you ever have any doubt I loved you. I did, I do
and I always will.
Wybie x
