The radiant sound of laughter falters in the hand of piercing silence. Two stubborn minds silently struggle with the will to speak, yet their headstrong natures refuse them permission to utter a single word. Confusion clutters their minds as they attempt to understand how they allowed this friendship to collapse.
Walking through the halls, we share a glimpse of eye contact followed by immediate avoidance. It is insane how someone who once knew every aspect of my life becomes someone I can hardly look in the eye. We shared moments of laughter, long nights of staying up an hour too late and eating a bit too much. We worried about the boys who caught our eyes. All of this time spent together, only to bring us to this moment of simply crossing each other in the halls without a single greeting.
I cringe at the way our friendship faded. That is the most depressing thing about the end of friendships, in most cases; it is difficult to pinpoint the reason it ended. It seems as if it simply faded away rather than ending in an actual fight. I would prefer to have a destructive cause rather than it be my own headstrong nature that destroyed the beauty of it all.
Throughout the several unsuccessful friendships that I have been in, I have learned that I do not necessarily deal well with difficult situations I am presented with; I tend to avoid them.
It is not her fault that our friendship faded, and I do not believe I should feel any rancor toward her for our fallout. I am just as responsible, if not more so: I had the power to speak, to possibly stitch us back together, and I didn’t.
I thought she was going to be someone that I would still be sitting next to years down the road, someone I could relish in memories with in our ‘golden’ years, someone who would never let me live down embarrassing moments, yet she has become someone who I rarely share a passing smile with.
Dealing with the end of a friendship can be more painful than a breakup. Anytime I watch something that causes me to laugh, I instantly think about how she would react and how much she would laugh with me.
The overbearing silence makes me cringe. I wish I could still show her that cute boy in the store. I wish I could spill out every secret that I try to push from my lips. I wish I could go to that new store with her. I wish that our laughter could fill up the silent classroom one more time.