We tried.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. But in quiet ways that mattered more than words sometimes. We tried to fix what had already begun to break, without realizing that some cracks can't simply be glued back together.
I remember the afternoons when I tried to bring back the old rhythm. Small gestures. Shared jokes. Random messages just to see you smile. I wanted to laugh like we used to, to sit together without hesitation, to talk as if nothing had changed. I thought familiarity could erase the distance. I thought effort could heal what time had stretched.
But fixing something fragile isn't about trying harder it's about understanding what's broken. And we didn't understand. Not fully. Not yet.
Every attempt felt like walking on glass. A smile, a message, a casual laugh it could either bridge the gap or highlight it. And sometimes, I wasn't sure which it would do. Some days it felt like we were close again. Other days, it felt like everything had slipped further.
There were moments I wanted to ask: "Do you feel it too?"
But even asking would have been dangerous. It might have forced honesty where we weren't ready. It might have revealed how fragile we had become. So instead, I kept trying. Carefully. Politely. Hesitantly.
We weren't pretending to be strangers, but we weren't fully us either.
We were somewhere in between.
And maybe that was the truth I didn't want to accept. That some things can't be fixed just because you care. That love, closeness, and friendship, no matter how strong, can stretch and fade when life pulls people in different directions.
Even with all the effort, I felt it: the cracks weren't just in us they were in the space we shared.
And yet, I couldn't stop caring. I couldn't stop trying.
Because the heart doesn't care about practicality. It only knows what it has loved, and it only remembers the warmth, the laughter, the comfort, the connection.
Even when the cracks are obvious, even when the distance is growing, even when the words have gone unsaid for too long… the heart holds on.
And for a while, that was all I had.