I kept hoping loyalty would turn imbalance back into love

Dear Delyara, I think I believed that if I stayed warm enough, patient enough, understanding enough, then the friendship would remember itself. It didn’t. History is powerful, but it cannot replace present care forever. At some point, loyalty becomes a way of staying too long in a place that no longer meets you with enough consistency to feel safe, alive, or equal. That is the part I still grieve. Not only losing the friendship. Staying beyond the point where it still felt mutual.