You’ve been unusually quiet lately.
I used to find your tendency to go back and forth with yourselves for hours on end extremely distracting and more than a little maddening. But now that you barely speak to or around me anymore, I can’t help but wonder where you are and why you’ve left me. 

It gets really quiet late at night.
I’m not used to that. I used to think I enjoyed the silence but I’m coming to realise that what I truly enjoyed was how clearly I could hear you when nobody else was speaking. You offered your opinion on things I struggled with, offered solace through humour and often came to me with stories you couldn’t explain the origins of. 

If I’m being honest, I still think you talked too much whenever you felt you had something to say. Like when I would be making my way home with the car radio on and you would demand that I turn it down and speak to you instead. No matter how much I loved the song that was on. No matter how strange it looked to people in the cars around me. Or the way we would laugh together in the kitchen about something that had happened earlier in the day that we couldn’t talk about at the time but we both noticed and waited until it was safe to laugh.

The things you had to say weren’t always insightful, funny and kind. You can be unbelievably cruel and some of the things you’ve said to me have hurt me in ways I never thought possible until they poured out of you. Things you said under the guise of being honest but packaged them crudely. Things you never apologised for but always stood ready to accept the forgiveness for. Things about me, the choices I’ve made, the people I love, the things I fear and the dreams I hold. Some of these dreams died at your hands. I’m not sure how to go about forgiving you for that. I don’t think I ever will.

But I miss you.
I used to think that you were what kept me on the outskirts of sanity. Poking at me with a stick and threatening to push me over the edge. But the day I realised you had stopped speaking to me, I found myself walking towards the brink of sanity all on my own. Looking down from the cliff and wondering what it might be like to exist in free fall, even if just for a few moments, before the crash. I realised that you kept me from jumping. You distracted me with the things I needed to hear in the words only you could speak to me. 

I find myself wondering sometimes if something I did pushed you away. Perhaps I ignored you. Took the lion‘s share of your attention and spread across on my own issues and didn’t give any attention to any concerns you might have had or struggles you may have been facing. I’ve never considered us friends, but if I were to look at us as such, I haven’t been a very good one to you at all. So I’ve decided to come looking for you. If you’re reading this, I’m afraid the edge of the cliff  is becoming too appealing to ignore. I wonder if this is what you experienced before leaving. If the appeal of the cliff took you and I didn’t hear your screams as you fell. If you’ve gone and jumped, send me a sign.
Tell me what it’s like
at the bottom of the cliff.

“I know what this is. It’s just myself, talking to myself, about myself”

Thomas Shelby