There's a strange kind of emptiness in realizing someone has become a part of your life, and yet, you don't share it the way you used to.
By the time we started drifting further apart, I began noticing the parts of myself I had never seen before. I was quieter in some ways, braver in others. I discovered habits and thoughts that I hadn't explored when we were constantly together. Spaces that were once filled with your presence suddenly became mine alone.
And I think you changed too. You became someone I still recognized, but not completely. Someone still familiar, yet distant. We weren't enemies, nor were we strangers, exactly. We were two people reshaping themselves in the absence of what we once had.
It's a subtle transformation. Almost imperceptible. You don't notice the changes day by day. You just wake up one morning and realize that the laughter isn't quite the same, that the comfort doesn't stretch as far, that you can't share as freely. And in that realization comes a mix of grief and acceptance.
I missed you in ways I didn't know how to express. And yet, I couldn't hold onto the version of you that I loved. You couldn't hold onto me either. We were both learning to exist without relying on the other in the same way.
There were moments I envied people who never had to feel this way. People whose friendships didn't stretch, bend, and eventually drift apart. But then I remembered: those same people never knew the depth of connection we had. They never had laughter that spilled over into tears, silences that felt full, or a bond that felt like home.
We were lucky once.
And maybe that's enough.
Even now, I carry the pieces of you that became part of me the way you laughed at the smallest things, the way you understood my silences, the way your presence felt like safety. They live inside me, quietly, tucked into the corners of memory.
Who we became without each other is not the same as who we were together. But that doesn't mean it's worse. Just different.
We outgrew the version of us that existed side by side. But in doing so, we learned who we could be alone.
And maybe, that was the lesson our friendship was always trying to teach us.