Why am I sad? That question came to me only after the shock settled and the crying stopped, because what hurt more than anything else was something I had never even considered possible—that she would say such cruel words for me to someone else, to a friend, to anyone at all. 

It didn’t matter who he was, even if he was someone we both got along with; the idea that we could ever be the kind of people who talk about each other behind our backs felt so distant from what I thought we were. 

The worst part is I never did such a thing to her, and right now I feel this heart-aching urge to share this with a friend, but I stop myself because it feels like I would be doing the same thing she did. Thank god he’s not awake right now. I realised as soon as I said ’Hi’ that I shouldn’t say anything, because I believe it’s okay, for once, if you walk out from people's lives as someone they made fun of, but I  will never be the one to make fun of them. I realised this yesterday too—that I should never say something mean to someone, not even disguised as humour or a “thing” and not even if that person spoke such things first—and I’m grateful that this understanding came before anything irreversible could happen.

You never know what is going on in a person's life. We are all writing our own stories at our own paces while facing our own weather. To intend to put a dent in someone's story is dangerous in a way we will never acknowledge, because it could be a match, a trigger for them to stop writing, to stop trying.  The worst part is you'll never realise your mistake, if you realise your mistake, you'll never acknowledge it out loud, and even if you do, you can never undo the events that take place as a consequence of your mere words. 

When I found the messages, I had a panic attack, or I think I had one? I’ve never seen someone diagnosed with a panic attack, so I can never confidently share this with anyone. I had difficulty taking a proper breath for a few seconds; whatever it was, what matters is what I’m feeling today.

 I have never been so humiliated in my life. This is not the kind of humiliation you face at the centre of a busy street. No. I'll remember this humiliation every time I stand in front of the mirror. Seeing her messages made everything collapse into a single thought—“oh shit”—and with it came the realisation that I had been naive. Oh, so naive. 

It was naive of me to tell myself to trust her blindly and convince my anxiety that it’s okay if she doesn’t actually find me decent company, because then I wouldn’t be the one at fault. But that logic only works until you realise how different it feels when you have already chosen to invest yourself completely in someone, only to discover that you were wrong to do so. 

There is a specific cruelty in being proven right about your own worst fears. My anxiety had whispered this possibility for a long time, and I had shushed it, called it irrational, told myself I was projecting. And now I don't know how to explain to that part of me that being right didn't make it hurt any less. It made it hurt more.

 It is easier, oh so much easier, to keep yourself at arm’s length away from people you involve in your life, but I didn’t keep her away because I believed she felt the same way around me. With others, I never allowed myself that illusion—I have never believed, even for a moment, that they consider me a close friend—and perhaps that is why I could accept it there.

Nobody wants everyone everywhere, and not a single person among the 8.3 billion will ever tell you otherwise. I accept this fact. But I couldn’t apply that same reasoning here, and now I understand why that difference matters...

Writing this now, I can already see how small this moment will appear to me in a few years, when I am someone else, somewhere else. So insignificant—like we’re all just specks of dust, facing our own dusty problems, and gravity is the only thing convincing us we belong anywhere at all. Still, it will feel insignificant then, but right now it doesn’t, and that is what makes it real. 

I’ll fly to the other end of the world if I have to, but I’ll never allow myself to go this deep again. If there exists a word for micro-cheating in friendships, this situation was it, waiting to bubble up into something maiming. And what unsettles me more is that I could recognise it in her response, in that brief, almost instinctive shift that said “Oh no.” without needing to say it aloud.

 I should stop, I really don’t want to be the person I am trying to avoid. Why am I hurt? Because, unlike others, I expected her to be genuine with me. Expectation—this is the most brutal of all. You can’t be heartbroken without expectation... it is expectation that makes the fall hurt.

Maybe that is the real lesson buried under all of this—not that people are cruel, because I don't even think she is. Maybe she didn't think of it as cruelty at all. Maybe it was just carelessness. And I am learning, slowly and painfully, that carelessness can wound just as deeply as intention. You don't have to mean to break something for it to break.

At the end of the day, two individuals will forever remain two individuals, and perhaps this is just another lesson I needed to learn. What it leaves me with is the decision to keep her at a distance—not a harsh, rigid one, but a gentler boundary that still exists—because it no longer feels possible to be as open as I once was with someone who could speak about me in that way to others.

The only question is how I do this for my sake without bringing an obvious change in our relationship, because if I succeed, I will become one of the fake ones, but if I don’t, I risk experiencing this pain all over again. Between the two, the choice is easier for me than I would like it to be. 

I must prioritise myself because no one else ever will. So I’ll do it. I have to exist as an individual— someone who can care about people, even choose them, but never, never, dissolve into them, because there is nothing worse than losing yourself... 

As Taylor Swift said—
May your heart remain breakable,
but never by the same hands twice. 

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