Friendship doesn't become important overnight.
It settles into your life slowly, until one day you realize it's everywhere.
At some point, talking to you stopped feeling like a choice and started feeling like a routine. Not a boring one a comforting one. Like something my day automatically adjusted around.
I started saving things to tell you. Small incidents, random thoughts, moments that wouldn't matter to anyone else. You became the first person I wanted to text when something funny happened, and the first person I wanted to sit beside when days felt heavy.
It wasn't planned.
It wasn't intentional.
It just… happened.
You became part of my normal in ways I didn't question. Your presence was so consistent that I stopped noticing it the way you stop noticing the sound of rain when it rains every day. Only later do you realize how loud the silence feels without it.
We didn't need excuses to talk. Conversations didn't have clear beginnings or endings. They spilled into each other, stretched across hours, sometimes across days. Even when nothing important was said, it still felt important to be there.
That's how I knew.
You weren't just someone I talked to.
You were someone I expected.
And expectations are dangerous things. They make you believe something will stay just because it has always been there.
I trusted the routine too much. I trusted the comfort. I trusted the way we fit into each other's lives without effort. I thought habits were permanent.
I didn't know habits could fade too.