Goodbye old friend.

Some relationships don’t end because the love wasn’t real. Sometimes they end because the love was real—and staying became too painful.

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I think the hardest part of losing you wasn’t the fight. It was realizing that the person I loved and trusted could also be the person who hurt me the deepest.

I’ve gone over it a hundred times, trying to figure out where we broke, where we stopped seeing each other clearly. Maybe it was gradual. Maybe life got heavier. Maybe we both changed. Maybe we just stopped meeting each other where we once did.

What I know is this: what we had was real to me.

You were family to me. Not in the easy, surface way people throw that word around, but in the deep way—the way where I let you into my life, my pain, my home, my heart. I trusted you with parts of me that were still healing.

And for a long time, I thought we’d always find our way back to each other.

But somewhere along the way, the love between us became tangled in hurt, expectation, and resentment. And when things fell apart, the words that were said changed something in me.

Some wounds don’t just hurt. They wake up every wound before them.

I don’t hate you. I don’t even want to hold onto anger anymore. I think I’ve carried enough pain in my life already.

What I feel now is sadness.

Sadness for what we lost.

Sadness for what could have been.

Sadness for the version of us I thought would last.

But I also feel gratitude.

For the laughter.

For the late nights.

For the way we once showed up for each other.

For the pieces of life we shared that I will always keep.

You mattered to me.

You still do, in a different way now.

But I can’t carry this friendship forward the way it was. Too much broke. Too much changed.

So this is me letting go.

Not because it meant nothing.

But because it meant so much.

I hope life is gentle with you.

I hope you find peace.

I hope your kids grow surrounded by love.

And I hope someday, when you think of me, it’s with softness instead of hurt.

I’ll remember the good.

That’s how I choose to leave this.

Goodbye, old friend.