12/18/2025
Sometimes...
A boundary looks like this
Forgiveness looks like this
Standing up for yourself looks like this
Self-care/love looks like this
Emotional maturity looks like this
Growth looks like this
Healing looks like this
There’s a stillness between us now, and it’s not the bad kind. It’s not charged, or heavy, or waiting for a spark. It’s just still. Let’s be clear: there’s no beef between us. No drama waiting in the wings. I’m not sitting here simmering, and I hope you’re not either. Whatever tension existed has cooled into something neutral, something almost peaceful in its distance.
But that distance is permanent. And I need to say this plainly, more for my own closure than anything else: friendship isn’t on the table anymore. It’s not held hostage. It’s not paused. The table itself is gone.
Here’s why, and I’ll say it without heat: when you rewrote my character and made me the bad guy, something shifted. It wasn’t just a disagreement. It wasn’t a misunderstanding we could talk through. You took the complex, messy truth of me—with my good intentions and my human flaws—and you drafted a new version. A flat, one-dimensional villain to fit the narrative you needed to tell. You assigned me lines I never spoke and motives I never felt. You needed someone to hold the blame, and my name was the one you wrote on the tag.
And in that moment, something in the foundation of what we were just… crumbled. I looked at you, not in anger, but in a kind of sad recognition. I saw that your need to be right, to be the wounded one, was stronger than your loyalty to the truth of who I’d actually been to you. Once you see that capacity in someone—the capacity to erase your humanity for their convenience—you can’t unsee it. The trust doesn’t just break; it dissolves. The lens is permanently smudged.
So this is where I land, and I say it with a genuine heart: I still want good things for you. I hope you find peace. I hope you find joy that feels real and solid. I hope you heal the parts that need healing. There’s no lie in that. My well-wishing is clean.
But I just don’t want proximity. My peace is a place I’ve built carefully, brick by brick, in the aftermath. And that space cannot include someone who once tried to tear down the blueprint. My energy, my attention, my emotional real estate—they are precious resources now. I’ve become a careful steward of my own spirit. And that means making choices that protect its climate.
You can eat well out there in the world. Feast on success, on love, on adventure. Savor your life. Truly.
Just not beside me.
This isn’t a grudge. It’s a boundary. It’s the quiet, unemotional act of moving a chair away from a table that no longer exists. There’s no ceremony to it. No last word. Just the gentle, final understanding that some roads, once they fork, are meant to lead in separate directions. I’m walking mine with a lighter step, wishing you well on yours—far from here.
