My mother always told me to be careful when picking up broken glass.
I never got hurt as a child, as I always listened to my mother's advice. "Be careful," I would think as I would sweep the small pieces up with caution. But now, years older and wiser, I'm cut. One would think that I would have known better, that I would have listened to my mother. After all, I had adhered to her words before, so why am I injured now? Why would I be incapable of cleaning up after myself when I could do it at the age of six? Why am I sitting here with a piece of glass embedded in my side? And, more importantly, why can I not get it out?
It's because I wasn't careful. With you, I was reckless. I allowed myself to have the freedom to open up, to be myself. To tell you the jokes I was too timid to tell others, to smile and laugh whenever you told me how immature those same jokes were. I allowed myself the tiny indulgence of having a close friend, to have someone I could talk to about the stupidest things. To have someone's shoulder to lean on whenever I needed it, to be that shoulder to you. I wanted to have someone I could rely on, and I had it: You. I deemed the bond the two of us shared unbreakable. But, in truth, it was very fragile- I just didn't know it.
I didn't figure it out when you started talking to me less. I assumed you just wanted more time to yourself, for you to have your space. And I respected that, so I let you be.
I didn't figure it out when you no longer found my jokes funny. I assumed that I was the problem, that I was never truly funny in the first place. It never occurred to me that maybe you stopped caring about me and my stupid jokes. Yet you let me believe that it was all my fault our friendship was shattering, and I became lost.
I still hadn't figured it out when you stopped texting me back. I would ask you if you wanted to hang out, yet you didn't even have the energy to respond with a simple "no". I thought you were just uninterested in what we had planned, or maybe there was someone there that you just didn't want to be around.
It took me months to figure out that someone was me, and that you no longer wanted to be my friend. That you no longer wanted to text me stupid, immature jokes or to whisper to me in the quiet, that you no longer wanted me to be your shoulder or to be mine. And the sad thing is, I only figured it out when I felt a wrenching pain in my side. When I looked down at my stomach, I saw the mess that I had become, a walking shadow with a jagged piece of glass stuck in her side. Blood was pouring out everywhere and had been for months, yet I was numb and felt absolutely nothing. Numb because you, my best friend, had abandoned me. Numb because you, my best friend, no longer wanted me. Numb because you, my best friend, were the one person I trusted, yet you were the one who shattered the very idea of trust in a single moment.
I never realized who had placed that wound right above my hip. I always thought that it was me, that I had been reckless, not careful like my mother had taught me to be. But I found out that it was never my fault, that I was never flawed in a way that would cause you to abandon me- because it wasn't me who stopped caring. It was you.
It wasn't me who stopped being interesting, it was you who stopped being interested; it wasn't me who stopped being worth it, it was you who decided I was no longer worthwhile. It was not me who put that piece of glass in my side. It never was.
It was you.
That stupid shard stays with me everywhere I go. Whenever I see something that reminds me of you I feel it dig into me deeper than ever before, yet I don't remove it. Whenever I hear something that reminds me of you it sends me another painful reminder. But I allow it to stay there, where it refuses to lessen its hold on me. Whenever a song comes on the radio and you aren't there to sing along with me, it twists and turns and takes away my breath until I choke.
And yet it stays.
Because without it, I am without you. Without having the pain of what the past holds, I am without myself. Those memories that worsen me, that make me cry out in longing, hurt me- but they make me. With you in my life, I have been molded into a better person. I've never told you that, but I wanted to let you know that you have. These memories that I share with you- the ones that make me angry, frustrated, depressed, and unbelievably happy all at the same time- are the same ones that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. And even though I know I will have that painful ache in my side for the rest of my life as well, I know that it will be worth it.
Because you, my best friend, are worth it. Even if I do not mean the same to you.
