by Cynthia Shank
There was a time when we were each other’s safe place. Our friendship was a house built brick by brick. We were two stars orbiting the same sky.
We were inseparable. We cracked jokes like a lightning storm— loud and impossible to ignore, laughing until our ribs ached and our lungs gave out. Between us was a litany of promises kept till this day like a threadbare sweater that’s worn out—old but too precious to throw away.
But the roller coaster we rode fell to a free-fall, and it didn’t take much for things to change quickly. In just a few words, a stubborn silence grew louder over time, and a misunderstanding was left to fester.
We became strangers. No, worse. We were enemies.
Nobody tells you how much it hurts to lose a friend over time and distance. That slow burn kind of grief. An ache that settles in your chest when you pass by each other in the hallways or hear their name from someone else’s mouth. Yet, pride is such a cruel thing, convincing you that the silence is easier than saying, “I miss you.”
We let the months pile up between us like a wall neither of us wanted to climb. Pride whispered that reaching out meant weakness, that silence was safer than surrender, and losing a friend was better than losing an argument.
But all it really did was make the silence last longer and the situation worse.
Until we couldn’t take it any longer.
Who spoke first was a mystery. Maybe it was me, maybe it was you, or maybe it was the universe deciding that enough was enough.
There we were. No more walls, no more silence, and no longer enemies. Not quite friends, just two people stripped of pride. Not as strangers or rivals who we once used to be, but as people who loved each other enough to hurt.
The apologies came slow and hesitant, heavy with months of things unsaid. But as everything finally unraveled, I learned that forgiveness isn’t about erasing the past— it’s about refusing to let it write the future.
So to the friends I once buried— thank you for proving that some things aren’t meant to turn to ashes, but embers waiting to catch flame. Because some goodbyes were never meant to last.
