I was standing my bed when the storm hit. The phone call was only a few seconds long and she was crying on the other side. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know. That’s a lie. I did know. I knew I had to reassure her. I have to calm her down and tell her how much I support her. And how much I love her. And I’m not supposed to bring up myself—but why was it that I could only think of myself.

            I hear the words repeated a hundred times. Even now, a year later, I still hear her voice and the words she broke to me like thunder and I didn’t know what to say. I still don’t know what to say.

            “I went to a therapist,” she said. “We’ve been talking—it’s nice to have someone to talk to” she said. Aren’t I someone to talk to? It was hypocrisy. I know that now. I couldn’t ask her to talk to me. Not when I knew so much about her and she knew so little about me. Not when it was easy to lie to her, even when she begged me for some sort of truth.

            “Anxiety. Post-traumatic stress disorder. Hyper-vigilance.”

            I asked what they meant, but I was lying again. I knew what they meant. And I knew what they meant for her. But I thought it would comfort her. It would give her some sort of strength, some sort of power. And I kept lying. She told me all about them. For hours and hours and hours. I listened. Two months later, I kept listening her story and her problems and her pain, never once daring to share mine.

            But I got tired of waiting and listening and never speaking. And then I started being ignored. Missed calls and unanswered text, all culminating into heartbreaking avoidance and I was scared. So I did what I do best—I walked away.

            I called her on her birthday, which was dumb I know. She didn’t pick up but she texted me seven hours later. Thank you. I said we should talk. She never answered.

            I want to be honest with you and tell you something I don’t tell anyone. I don’t say I lost my best friend, I say “I gave her up.” But the truth is I didn’t walk away until months after she was long gone.

            The only truth I have now is a collection of photographs I refuse to look at anymore. All I have are bittersweet memories that I can’t relive anymore.  She promised me forever, but couldn’t last a year.