Best to be the Changing Water

I miss you every day. It’s only been two weeks and you’re still constantly on my mind, even if you’ve gone out of your way to disappear from my life.

I have so many feelings still. Betrayal, anger, sadness.

You promised when we got together that it wouldn’t affect our friendship if we broke up. Apparently you lied. You even said when we were breaking up that you wanted to stay friends, and then you blocked me on every platform we both shared.

I feel sure I know your reasons; I’m sure you feel like you’re protecting yourself. I’m sure she told you it was for the best, too. All I ever wanted for you was happiness, so I hope she makes you happy.

I still think she drove a wedge between all of us. I think she was jealous, and wanted you for herself. I know she didn't understand that there can be different levels of affection and connection in a poly group; I know L and I didn't connect with her on the same level we connected with you. I know she stepped in where it wasn't her place, too.

I'm still upset that it was so easy to break us. I thought we were stronger than that. I thought we could handle a little stress, work it out; I thought I could tell you all my feelings and you'd at least recognize that I was feeling upset. I was clearly wrong. It feels like I was wrong about so many things with you.

The only thing I know wasn't wrong was my love for you.

But if I could go back in time, I don't know whether it would be to go back and never ask you out in the first place, or just to go back to that day and keep my fool mouth shut. Even if I was just tightly wound and wanting more than I knew you had to give, worried for your health and safety, wanting the best for you.

I thought I was meant for you. I thought you would have my back, love me the way I love you.

I forgot that the arrangement was that it was my turn to be saved, not to try and save you.

I thought you could handle me. I thought you were stronger. I thought you were going to be a part of my life, a part of my future. I believed in you, in us. I believed you when you said you wanted to come out and visit, when you said you maybe wanted to come live out here with us someday. I was a fool, but I believed.

I built castles in the sky based on it, and when they came crashing down it left a ruin in my heart that will remain, a temple to the things that could have been.

You never meant to visit us, did you? You never meant to move. You just couldn't tell us, didn't want to disappoint us.

The same way you couldn't tell me when I had done something that upset you.

You told me you were dealing with "personal issues" and now I know-- no, I only suspect, but we're too much the same for it to be otherwise-- that those things were hurt feelings that were my fault. But you couldn't tell me that. You couldn't say anything that might hurt me, until it was too late and you said the things that would not only hurt but crush me. You never even really said goodbye.

Maybe that's what hurts the most. You couldn't be fucking bothered to tell me goodbye, to let me know you weren't coming back. You've left me with the faintest shred of hope for our friendship, waiting for the day you come back again. Which I will, because I've always been stupid for you.

I waited five whole years for a chance to be yours, and after four months of bliss, excitement, dreams... it's all gone. Worse than never getting my chance, I had it and I blew it and I lost you completely.

I miss your friendship most of all.

I try to live without regrets, but this... I know I'll regret this for a long time. Not giving you my heart, no; I could never regret that. Even if it still hurts, even if I still want to cry over the loss, even if I'm absolutely blindsided and crushed by how it turned out. But I regret that day. I wish I could take it all back and start over.


Yesterday, I found the one place you never blocked me for certain. Not that you ever answered me there to begin with, and I'm sure you're still on my friend list only because you use it so infrequently that you've forgotten it exists. But I can't help wanting to reach out, even if I know it's an exercise in futility, just to apologize and tell you I miss you. I won't, because I know you don't want to hear from me again. But I want to.

I still watch your posts on an alt account, just to know you're alive. Hoping that you've found peace. Wishing for the day that you come back to be my friend again. I won't reach out there, because I know that if I do I'll lose the last thread connecting us.

I haven't been on 'vu (save to check my inbox, to message with Rain) since you left. There's nobody there anymore except her, without you. L is here, Bec left us for SL, and everyone else I consider an actual friend hasn't been on in so long they may as well be gone completely. I couldn't even bring myself to log on to my laptop except to close everything related to the game and shut it back up.


I still think about you every single day. You're on my mind so much it drives me crazy. I spend so much time wishing I could wipe the slate clean and start all over. Wondering if maybe I should have begged you to stay, instead of just bowing my head and accepting it. The ache in my heart is constant.

I feel abandoned. The worst thing I could ever be, the voices in my head reminding me that nobody but me is really there at the end of the day. A reminder that I can't rely on anyone else, and a hard lesson in building castles that I thought were safe to build. They never are. Built on faulty foundation, made of sand and forever waiting for the tide to come in.

You couldn't even tell me why you left. I know I was overwhelming, in that moment. But that can't have been all, there must have been more, and my mind is twisting searching for wrongs I've done that left me deserving this. I must deserve it, or you'd still be here. I must have been so wrong for you. I must have been truly awful, for you to feel the need to block me and run.

But on the other hand, how was I to know? Maybe that's just who you are, always running from your problems instead of facing them. Maybe I was insignificant in the grand scheme, just another complication you didn't want anymore, to be discarded. Maybe you did lie to me all along when you said you loved me, though I find it hard to believe. Maybe you did lie when you said you wanted me, to protect my feelings. Maybe you told L the truth when you said you and he had more connection than you and I; he noticed it on our trip (and so did I but I thought I was just imagining it until he said something), but maybe even that was a lie.

Maybe that's why we never hooked up, really, never got beyond the petting. Maybe you didn't really want me that way, maybe you lied when I asked how you felt. Maybe we really were just both too shy, and caught in bad timing all the rest of the time. Maybe you only wanted me when you were drunk.

And who knows how often you were blackout drunk when we spoke, how much of what you said to me was forgotten in the haze of alcohol and sleeplessness. Who knows how many feelings were just fueled by booze, regretted and forgotten by the morning. You're too good at hiding when you're drunk, and I find myself wondering if I could ever trust anything you didn't tell me sober to my face.

But the way you looked at me when we were together, the ways I caught you staring in the rearview... these are the things that come back to me, that sit in my mind shattering the pieces of my heart one by one until I'm crying all over again. I haven't cried this much or this hard since Waifu and I broke up. I'm grateful to be able to cry, to not be numb, but I'm so tired of the ache in my chest.


And if you ever do come back to be my friend... I know I could never ask you about any of this. It would become taboo, a frozen chunk of time that we never speak about, that I never ask about, for fear of you leaving again. I would just have to swallow my feelings, choke on the questions and tears, and wait for the inevitable point of leaving again. Because if you've done it once... well, I'm sure you know where I'm going with that sentiment.

But I would still take that, and your friendship, over this empty space in your absence.