an introvert and an extrovert - still friends, just not talking

Maybe we could have lasted if you had different ways to cope.

Maybe we would still be talking all day, good morning and goodnight texts, smiley faces, hearts, promises, hopes.

Your honey-sweet words and thoughts traveled a long way to me, flying through state after state, sent only to me, and I would excitedly open every package. Every how was your day and stay safe, every tidbit of information about yourself, I would save in my precious storage room just for you.

You said we would be friends forever.

You said we would meet one day and walk through forests and have picnics and watch sunsets and run around in the rain at night.

You promised things to me, and I would think of them when life formed a cave around me, my hopes for us being the sole diamond in my life's mine.

Two months later, I'm just a former friend to you.

If I get over losing you, hearing your name will be just a papercut, my heart slit by the very letters you sent me. A stab of pain, discomfort, and then I'll forget all about it.

I dread the day that I'll think of you and remember you as a former friend, not my friend, not my best friend, just someone I used to know.

The day that my relinquishment of you will trample upon our memories together is one I never hope to face.

Do you think the same way?

Or has that day already come for you?

A bad habit of introverts, a coping mechanism you had, one I came to curse while I sobbed.

You, someone I came to prioritize over many friends I'd known for much longer than the two months I'd known you, someone who I prayed for before I even prayed for myself, someone who I'd worry about and smile with and cry for.

You, my friend, knowing me perfectly, feeling close without ever having met.

You, my moon, my magic, would tell me I was your sun and then leave me for weeks.

You would cut everyone off.

To me, you and your imagination were like a silk scarf, illuminated and shapeless, vibrant colors melting together, changing by the way it faced the light, soft and comforting.

If I threw your silk scarf over the universe, clothing all of the stars and planets in the sparklingly magical world that comes with you, there would never be enough universe to cover-that was the depth I saw of your imagination.

And every time things got too hard, you would crumple up your silk and shove it inside the hollow shell of your room, piling laundry over it, ignoring it until you felt right again.

Was I like a silk scarf to you too? Or had I always just been another piece of laundry, unknowingly burdening you and your imagination?

I repeated to you every night that I was there for you.

I wished your ways to cope with everything going on were different, that instead of shoving it all inside and mindlessly playing games all day, you could rely on others, share with others, instead of cut them off.

My other friends hate you by now, they despise the pain you’ve put me through.

Every tear I shed about you is another drop of water in their glass of hatred for you.

And yet I still love you, I still miss you, I still plan what I’d do upon meeting you, I’m looking years ahead, and maybe you’re wishing you hadn’t done the same, that you hadn’t made promises to me for when we were adults.

Maybe I just got too connected to someone I had a one in a million chance of meeting. Maybe it was that we just needed someone, not each other, just someone, and we came across each other at the right time.

Right time but wrong person, maybe.

I know that isn’t true.

Maybe our relationship was the perfect person but the wrong time, a time when your introversion had its stabbing blades, slashing at your own silk scarf, cutting people out of your life with not even a sprinkle of hesitation.

Why didn’t you let me share your pain?

I patiently withstood your stabbing blades, and every time you came back, I’d forgive you, I’d tell you that it was okay.

A bad habit of extroverts, a natural instinct, maybe one you came to curse while sobbing as well.

I took on your goals for yourself as my own goals. Still patient with you, but attempting to steer you to change, and maybe, probably, most likely, that made you feel as though you weren’t good enough. 

You told me you felt that way a lot, that you felt you weren’t worthy of me, that I deserved better, and I told you you were more than worthy, that you were amazing, that I appreciated you for who you are, but actions speak louder than words, don’t they?

It was my fault that you made so many difficult promises that built up into a brick wall around you until all you could do was sink into the ground and never come back up.

I’m sorry.

You always told me not to apologize, that I did nothing wrong, but if I could talk to you, the teapot of apologies I've been brewing over the past two months would bubble over and overflow, and I'd repeat how sorry I was for each action, each regret.

I didn't know much at the time, just a little girl figuring out the diversities of friendships, but if I could go back, I'd change a lot. 

Our bad habits as introverts and extroverts, our coping mechanisms and natural instincts, our stabbing blades embraced while holding knives to each others' necks.

You’re my precious friend, and I hope you thought of me as yours the way you said you did, and even though you’ve decided to finally cut me off--to send me an I wish you the best in life text at 3 AM, leaving me when I wasn’t able to respond, and I woke up, excited to read your first texts to me in a while, and you were gone--I still have an undeniable constant rush of hope and sadness, wishing for you to come back just like you did all those other times.

I'll keep listening to your favorite songs, hoping they're the background music of a movie we're in and wishing, just like what can only happen in movies, that we end up together again.

We told each other we’d be friends forever, and maybe we still are, an introvert and an extrovert, thousands of miles away from each other, still friends, just not talking.