I miss the friendship and not the version I became in it

Dear Delyara, That distinction only became clear later. At first I thought I missed the friendship entirely. The messages, the habits, the ordinary closeness. But the more honest version is that I miss parts of it, not the whole thing. Because by the end, I had become someone less comfortable in myself inside that friendship — more careful, more overgiving, more likely to explain away imbalance because history made letting go harder. I miss the beginning. I miss what it represented. I don’t miss the version of me who kept trying to save what had already changed shape. That realization hurt. It also freed me.