I should have known it was a bad idea

I should have known it was a bad idea…

Just skimming through all of the pictures and notes we passed during class. Remembering how we always failed at trying to never be able to stop ourselves from laughing at inside jokes or old memories. Always calling and texting throughout the day even though neither of us were supposed to. One would say that we knew more about each other than we knew about ourselves. If only I had noticed the signs earlier and if only I had been admin about talking to you about it. It started as soon as you mentioned you were moving to another school, that was when it all started. Rumors that had no concrete evidence were always the worst, and it was just so convenient in the way it had started the moment you mentioned leaving. People started whispering and giving glances to people. These side glances and murmurs all brought back memories of random conversations on what would happen if you had left.

Whenever the rumors finally came back to you I saw a dark going into your eyes. It was frightening, but afterwards the rumors were never brought up or discussed ever again. You would always smile and I could tell that it wasn't genuine nor was it tolerable. The conversations that were always common between us were about technology and AI. These conversations were always interesting and inspired what I would write for assignments. For some reason after you left, even though we still talked and hung out. It didn't feel like you. My gut was telling me it wasn't you.

Throughout the times I hung out with you, it felt as if it was the first time for everything. I could almost start to feel as though you had replaced your true self with someone else that you deemed to be perfect. I couldn't understand why you did this to yourself. Maybe I could at some point in the future, but now is not the true timing for me to know how it felt for you.

What had happened to have made you unlike yourself to me, your best friend?

You no longer have the same shine in your eyes nor the same confidence in your movements and walk. I can see the brokenness inside yourself. Your kind and spunky attitude is no longer present when you look at me or smile. I can see you start to wear more revealing clothes that I know you hate wearing. You have a hidden look of disgust of having random attention on the street. Still, you hang on the arms of the ones who give you this attention. What had happened?

No longer do I see someone with a confident but an adventurous view on life, but someone who allowed themselves to be put into the box of normality. You used to wear a smirk or a smile whenever talking or fighting someone. Now you look at them with the look of wanting to disappear. Despair is clear on your face as you look at the top of towers, ropes, blades, and rivers that would guarantee a quick and painless end to suffering.

With you no longer at our school, the rumors are being disrupted but the people are looking at me with pity. Why are they looking at me with pity? You and everyone else knows how I hate being looked on with eyes full of pity. I know I no longer am smiling, laughing, and joking as much as before but that doesn't make any difference. Why is it that people are now offering to sit with me during classes and lunch time? Offering to hangout after school whether one on one or with other people. What is going on?

When I lost you, did I lose myself too? Did you ever notice what was happening to me? Did you still stay just out of pity? What had happened to us, to me, to you?