There’s something entirely different, entirely unique in the pain of ending a friendship.
There’s a special kind of hurt to shedding your skin, ripping out your fleshy insides for a person who is supposed to be there for you, and for them to be gone.
There’s a special kind of anguish to losing the person who’s supposed to be there when the others you rely on aren’t, the person supposed to be your foundation, a home away from home.
But sometimes homes rot.
Sometimes homes do not want to protect you. Sometimes they want to see you burn in the fires they light.
Sometimes homes rot, and they want to see you rot too.
You have to shut off the voices that overlap, the ones that nip at the soft parts of your brain,
Yank on the nerves as if they were plugs, the ones that tell you you won’t ever have a connection, a companion, a best friend, the ones that try to convince you that loneliness is the only solution, the ones that bully you worse than anyone ever could.
It’s heartbreaking to know — to admit — that a person who had so much power over you took a piece of you and turned it into something ugly.
It’s embarrassing
Humiliating —
But power is funny that way because it’s reversible.
And now it’s in your hands because here you are
With a smile that would make them wither and burn inside
With a smile that could make them curse themselves for not being able to break you down to what they’ve reduced themselves to
With a smile worth a thousand words.