This Is How I’m Coping With Us Being ‘Just Friends’

I remembered feeling like the end of our relationship was trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Forcing two puzzle pieces that clearly didn’t belong together, but I could’ve sworn that in the beginning it had fit perfectly. Then life came at us in a whirl and in one blink – everything we worked together on suddenly disappeared.

It happens. After all, we’re in our 20s and everything with our life, career, and relationships happen in a whim. I know how hard it was for us to find time to breathe, but over time you felt that I was suffocating you. At one point, I became tired and it didn’t take long for me to fall out of love with the man who used to be my home.

So I gave you what you wanted…

The status of us being just friends.

I shouldn’t use ‘us’ anymore because we’re friends. It still takes awhile for me to get used to not seeing things about us, and rather seeing things on a ‘you and I’ basis. Separation – that’s what you felt we needed.

You still linger in the back of my mind and sure I still open my messages with you from time to time. In a way, it makes me feel closer to you without having to intrude your space. Unfortunately, it only makes me sadder knowing what you and I had was no more. I trust that over time, I will open the message box less and less, but I’m just not ready to do so yet.

While I know it would be a risk not cutting off communication ties with you after things ended, your messages are single-handedly the one thing that makes me happy. It doesn’t matter how awkward the conversations have become as you and I navigate through this path called ‘friendship’ because to me, you’re still my happy place.

I’m not out partying or getting wasted trying to get over you. I’m not flooding this city with my tears either. During the time we drifted apart, you gave me the space to feel the ache in my heart, to wipe the tears away, and to accept that right now is not our time.

If you’re one to believe in destiny then I can only trust that if we were meant to be, life will show us that. For now, I’ll sit here and accept that perhaps we are better off as friends.