I was lonelier inside that friendship than I admitted

Dear Delyara, I think that is why losing it hurt so much and eventually relieved me too. By the end, I was already lonely inside it. Still present, still trying, still loyal to the history, still making excuses for the imbalance, but lonely. The kind of loneliness that comes from being with someone who no longer reaches for you in the same way, while you keep extending grace out of memory. When it ended, I grieved the person and the pattern. But I also stopped needing to pretend the loneliness wasn’t real. That was painful. And clarifying.