This Is How It Feels To ‘Just Be Friends’

I wish this was a dream. The way you ran your fingers through your hair made it seem like one. But as fast as you arrived in my life, you left. Without any warning signs you just decided to one day call it quits. I wasn’t looking for anything before I met you, I wasn’t looking for anything even after I met you. It was the constant communication, the calls before bed that you told me you loved. The compliments on my sleepy voice, or the smell of my hair. The way you would call me babe and thank me for talking to you even though you thought you didn’t deserve it. I let you in. I let you into my house and under my skin and I let you course through my veins and become a part of my every day and you still left. I don’t know what I did wrong. Was I coming on too strong? Did I share something too personal? You told me you had felt nothing for such a long time, yet you let me continue to think that maybe there was something there. That maybe you would change my mind about everything and hold me so tight my heart would mend itself from all the other heartbreaks it had experienced. Worst of all you watched me begin to fall for you and you so graciously broke my heart with four simple words. “Let’s just be friends.” As if that was something we were skipping past. You said you wanted to start new and fresh but how am I supposed to start new and fresh when all I can think about is that you would touch all these other girls except for me. And as I sat there listening to you tell me about how you had fucked two other girls, I could feel my breath draw shorter and my thoughts become darker. Why wasn’t I good enough for you? Why wasn’t I even enough to try and get to know or fall in love with? What made me such a horrible person that you couldn’t even touch me without feeling uncomfortable and needing to withdraw from me. I told you I was fine but I so obviously lied. I was hoping you wouldn’t notice that my eyes were becoming glassier from the tears I was holding back. As I gently closed your door I remembered what high hopes I had at the beginning of the night. I couldn’t wait to kiss you and hold you and compliment you. I couldn’t wait to tell you how you made me feel, and now all I couldn’t wait to do was get to my car so that I could cry in peace. I only vaguely remember driving home, going through the motions of exiting the 51 and going South. When I finally pulled my car into my driveway I was still in disbelief. How could someone who had appeared so kind hearted and loving, just throw me away so easily? How could someone fall in love with a girl they’ve only talked to twice but not a girl they talk to every night before bed and share all the little details of their day with? How could someone treat another human being like that? I wish this was a dream. I wish I could wake up.