There are some conversations you know you should have, and yet, you never do.
With you, there were so many things left unsaid. Things that hovered between us like quiet shadows—questions about distance, about silence, about the cracks forming in what had once felt unbreakable. And every time I thought about bringing them up, I stopped. I hesitated. I told myself it wasn't the right moment, or that we weren't ready, or that it would make things worse.
And so we avoided it.
We smiled politely. We talked about ordinary things. We laughed at the jokes we still remembered. But beneath the surface, the tension hummed quietly, refusing to be ignored. Each of us sensed it. Each of us tiptoed around it. Pretending, just enough, that everything was fine.
But it wasn't.
I remember walking home one evening, thinking about everything I wanted to say to you. The words were heavy in my chest. I wanted to tell you that I felt the distance growing, that I missed the way we used to be, that I was scared of losing the friendship even if it didn't seem like it could be lost. But I didn't.
Because admitting it would have required a kind of honesty that neither of us seemed ready for.
So we avoided it.
We became masters of careful conversation, of politeness over truth. We learned how to exist in the same space without addressing the elephant in the room. And in that avoidance, the distance widened even further.
It's strange to realize that silence can be louder than words. That what isn't said often shapes a friendship more than what is. And I think that's exactly what happened to us.
I don't blame us for avoiding the conversation. I understand why we did. We were both trying to preserve something fragile. But preservation comes at a cost. And ours was the unspoken truth, slowly growing in the spaces between us.
Even now, I sometimes wonder what would have happened if we had spoken. If we had been brave enough to say the words. Would it have saved us? Or would it have ended things sooner?
We'll never know.
But the memory of avoidance lingers like a quiet echo, reminding me of how much I once loved someone I couldn't fully reach.