“I'm just saying that generally someone who is a very good friend is someone I have known for a very long time.”



So I’m a terrible friend, it’s why he left me for dead.

I’ll admit it: I tell the truth too strong or lie my way too lightly; either way I’m covered by the truth of others or my own shroud of lies. I’m a terrible person and even worse friend, and I’m anticipating hell when my life deems itself over.

But what tears me apart the most is that even after that spring-to-summer season, it still wasn’t close. Not even. All of that trust I put in him, and all of that thought and care I put into him, and none of it mattered in the end. It’s like I didn’t exist when the wind blew a different direction.

He was blessed. The wind blew lightly for him.
Why was I so plagued?

Is it because I’m so terrible that I can’t keep a friend long enough, that to his standards, would only be a third or less of what he considered good?
I can name them all, each only a small tear in my life in comparison to the next. They all matter because each held me into a deep and dark place for a time.
It was that darn wind.

The wind blew them hard enough that it would be saner to just give in before it ripped them to shreds. Whether that wind was something as physical as distance or time, or something within myself that pushed them to let go, I didn’t know.

With that said, is it possible that I could control that wind? The last one, and the most regrettably painful, would simply leave me behind and let the wind take him places whether or not I had anything to do with them.

Maybe, if looked at with a backwards eye, the wind blew me around and people stood still as I floated from friend to friend. Maybe I was the one who let go to keep myself sane. This would make the most sense anyway: leading a strictly academic life took a toll on my social one.

If I could float, then it wouldn’t be fair to keep everyone else on the ground, but look at them! Lifelong friends and strong bonds! That’s their cement. That’s their gravity.

It is difficult to generalize all the broken friendships the wind blew me through. And at this point, one really puts me into deep thought nowadays. The wind teases and taunts as if we could have—as if I could’ve—done something to save it.

The story was old and overtold, but the things unsaid are what matters most anyway. The reason behind why I’m here thinking about it right now. Still, after all this time, why is this so important to me?

During the summer, all would agree that news between peers was scarce, or simply hid itself making it harder to find. What is so terrible is that our friendship seemed to be built on the rumors about others. Our chat windows were lacking in content as if the rays of the summer sun withered our deep watered conversation to a shallow pool.

Even now, I refuse to believe that’s how everything ended. I know on the inside that it was something I did, and that something took over both of us and blindfolded us to who we really were. We let the other fall, in fear of being let down. To this day, we’re still blindfolded, but we’ve figured out who our real friends are long ago; we’ve just let something as trivial as that hide what was really there.

That was my biggest regret. I didn’t realize I was falling until I hit the ground that autumn. Leaves burned vibrant scarlets and glowing goldens but at that point I was nothing in his eyes.

I would’ve easily denied the advice to let him go for my own selfish needs. I made a nuisance of myself just so he knew—and hoped he remembered—I existed, and why I was once worth a glance. Why? Because I was selfish, that’s why. I was just waiting.

For what? There were people he cared about more—people whom had left something worth keeping in his life. I, to my dismay, was not one of them. He forgot me—me, the one willing to wait, me, the one still waiting! Me, the one who held his heart and his sanity under close care, me, the one who put my own heart and my own sanity in his hands! Me, the one who cries every once in a while because I lost more than my mentality, me, who tries to be happy he hasn’t lost his.

I was last in line. The wind shoved me further and further away, as more people, more than me, got closer and closer to him. More and more I squinted to see if he, through the crowds he was indeed hidden in, could see I was fighting a storm no one else felt.

As much as everything changed and changing, I didn’t want us to. I was just fighting the push and pull of inconstant winds, just so I could be something—something good.