Being ‘Just Friends’ With You Slowly Killed Me

The idea of being just friends sounded like a good one at first. I would still get to text you our inside jokes. I would still get to see you face-to-face. You would still be a part of my world, which I considered a good thing, because the thought of letting you go was too painful to handle.

I was wrong. Being just friends was even more difficult than walking away would have been.

It slowly killed me inside. Every time you told me you were out, I wondered who you were with and whether you were on a date. Sometimes I would ask and get a sinking feeling in my stomach when you mentioned another girl. Other times I would hold back from asking questions because I didn’t want to look overly concerned with your love life. After all, it was none of my business anymore.

Even though we considered ourselves friends, it didn’t feel like a typical friendship. We had to hold so much back from each other. I didn’t want to come to you with stories about crushes and seem like I was trying to make you jealous. I didn’t want to come to you with complaints about my life either and seem like I was miserable without you. I felt like I had to censor myself around you. I felt like our conversations were limited to safe topics.

With the rest of my friends, I was free to joke around without worrying about how my actions would be interpreted. But with you, I never knew whether I was crossing a line by texting you first thing in the morning or slapping your arm after you told a joke. I didn’t want you to wonder whether I was flirting with you, whether I still had strong feelings for you, whether I was attempting to win you back.

Maybe a part of me was hoping we would get back together. Maybe that is why I wanted to keep you close.

Every time I looked at you, I was hit with a million memories from our past. Every time your spoke, I thought about how good your lips tasted. Every time we were left alone together, I wondered whether the spark still existed. I wondered whether we should have given each other a second chance.

I had trouble moving on from you because you were always around. I never had a break from you. I never had an opportunity to push you out of my mind and focus on someone else. You were a distraction.

At first, I wanted to take the high road. I wanted to have some sort of relationship with you, even if it wasn’t a romantic one, because removing you from my world seemed unfair after everything we had been through together.

But it turns out that being just friends with you is not going to work. I am never going to move on from you when you are standing right in front of me.