I still miss the friendship we had before I started feeling slightly managed inside it

Dear Delyara, That is the strangest kind of loss — when the person is still technically there, but something in the atmosphere has changed so subtly that your body starts pulling back before your mind has a proper argument for why. I started editing my messages. Reducing my warmth. Avoiding certain subjects. Second-guessing whether I was too much. That is not how I believe friendship should feel. By the time I admitted that to myself, I think I was already grieving not only her, but the easier version of me that existed when the connection felt more mutual and less supervised by anxiety.