This is all just a means to an end

It has been a few weeks and the radio silence seems to be doing no apparent harm

Inside, it is silent

But outside this house of wooden walls and faded memories Defcon 5 has begun

There is a lot of space between the electrons and a nucleus

I’ve started buying Christmas presents and I have the perfect gift in mind for you, but I don’t think I’ll buy it. Because committing to gift giving would leave me in a solitary line destined for lack of reciprocation.

The problem is not that I have realized that I am okay without you. It’s that I know at the exact right moment, I could be happy with you.

But I have never been a fan of backsliding.

My personality craves a sense of finality that the end of this friendship is unable to offer. I want to yell and cry one last time, but then we’d have to explain. To every passing person that inquires on why we aren’t featured in Snapchat stories or VSCO journals, explain that “we aren’t friends anymore”.

And when people ask me what’s up with you. I have to fight back an ocean of emotions that try to crash over. I’m forced to bite my tongue and say something vague and generic as to not draw attention to the space between us.

So maybe this year, we pretend that Christmas doesn’t exist. Maybe we’ll pretend that December 25th is just another day and we’ll disregard the gifts piling at our feet from loved ones who have actually stuck around.

Just like we pretend that our lack of communication and the stretch of distance that extends everyday really isn’t that long.

“Ya look good.” And for once this won’t be echoed by sarcasm, but it’ll flow genuinely from my lips. Because you do look good, you look happy. And a dusty corner in my heart will swell, because I’m happy that you’re happy.

But teach me how to revisit old memories with low saturation and a grain of 8.9 without tearing up. Because the Snapchat memories of late nights at Taco Bell facing a brick wall adorned with beer signs where we laughed all night long, still make my heart groan

Teach me how to be happy for you without feeling pity for myself, because I hate pity. But the pain that I feel from our dying acquaintance is stronger and more lethal than any arsenal a teenage boy or my sister could hurt me with.

This is all just a means to an end

But I don’t really wanna talk about it.