Truth

I do not know what to get anyone for Christmas and all my presents suck and lately they've all been irritating me anyways so why would I even bother to get them anything? Maybe they don't deserve it. Maybe often enough I find myself thinking they don't deserve it, that they don't get me, that we don't really care about each other.

But I said I would and if I don't they'll know something is wrong and then panic over my well-being and then the fake caring comes in. Everyone fake cares and doesn't even know they're doing it half the time. When you pretend to be concerned or worried over something you're not--we all do it. I do it. You've all done it; admit it.

There are two sides to every story.

People are never sincere unless they really care, and in truth, not everyone can really care.

You can only be close to so many people before being close to them doesn't mean as much anymore.

Doesn't mean anything anymore.

And maybe it doesn't even take that to make two people separate. It doesn't, actually. It takes an argument, a trivial argument over a stupid thing. And it can have loads of reason behind it or nothing at all, because maybe your relationship was built on the trivial, that which doesn't matter, and you've just gotten a reality check. So the relationship melts, in its fragile state, like sugar doused with water, because there's nothing to hold you together--you never had anything in the first place.

Just pointless conversations and in jokes no one else understands, jokes you would look at later and see the stupidity of. But you never realized that when you were still friends, it was all part of the happy illusion you were just so willing to believe, above all else. Even if it was too good to be true. Because you were airtight, you adored each other, and the day you stopped being friends was the day of Armageddon.

Until that day truly arrived and the rest of the world was in one piece, but you were a million shards. Scattered in the dust. Left by the wayside. They didn't need you anymore--you never needed each other. Maybe you needed them, but certainly not vice versa. And you cry over it, you cry because even if they can just forget about those pointless, golden moments, you can't. They're ingrained in your heart; they're a part of you. And they always will be; you're sure of it.

The separation is scary, and unusual, and a totally surreal experience, but you don't let anyone know how much it terrifies you. You act fine, and you do what you always do, but you change. It's slow and it's gradual and no one notices it because it's so gradual, but it's happening. It's happening, and no force on earth, come hell or high water, can change that. The change teaches you not to trust, not to entertain yourself with the trivial, to only care about what can be, not what you wish could be. All you care about is protecting yourself from that hurt again, so you build up a sort of wall between you and the rest of the world. You resent them for putting you through that, and you don't want to be around them. People mention them and on the inside, you shudder. You want to cry, to bury yourself in a corner and never have to leave. And sometimes, more often that anyone ever should, you want to die to escape that feeling, because nothing feels safe anymore, no part of you can be preserved from that earthshaking hurt.

And you're a new person then. You crawl out of that hole and you rebuild yourself as that new, stoic person, the person who doesn't care about fantasies and illusions. You're the person who just cares and cares and cares, about everything, but loves nothing. You don't love anything or anyone anymore, only that which you loved before you became this new person, and you only hold those things closer, willing yourself not to lose them too. Losing them too would only tear you apart inside so fully, so completely, that you couldn't live anymore, and that shows you how weak you truly are, despite your wall. So you resent the initial person even more, because they made you change and even though you became a different person, you're still not safe and that pain can hit you again.

You know that you need them more because you're the one who takes the first step, the one who tentatively taps them on the shoulder and asks--but to you, it's begging, pleading, wishing with everything you have--if maybe, just maybe, you could talk. Because underneath it all, you yearn to have the old days back, the perfect, childlike days that you ruined. Only, there's no way to get them back and they're gone forever, and you just have to deal with it.

That doesn't mean you don't try, because you do try, with everything you have, and at the end you hug it out, and everything is okay, and the two of you go back to normal. But try as you might, the old days are gone. So the two of you tiptoe around each other, and eventually you learn to do more than care. You learn to love the little things--the seven am winter sunrise, the look of a dog that is learning that not everyone wants to beat the living hell out of it, and it finally trusting you, the way how frost dots the grass on fall mornings, the feel of that blanket you spent months sewing and how nice it looks now that you've finally finished, the way that even your family can laugh around a bonfire and spend four hours playing Apples to Apples. And everything isn't so dim and gloomy.

You're happy. But you can't love people--they seem to be only irritating creatures, worrying about stupid things.

But the happiness fluxes with despair, confused despair that doesn't know what to do or what aggravates it. It just wants to be done with.

Only you don't want to pick that fight again.

Sometimes, though, you do get to pick up all the pieces, and they help you. You've known each other for nearly as long as you can remember, you know everything about each other. Even through it all, you loved each other like the sisters you never had, even if you have one. And you go back to doing all those things you would do in first grade, back to spending most of every single Friday at her house, back to doing your math homework on her back deck even when it's freezing outside. Because the two of you are true friends, for lack of a better word. And maybe you will fall apart in college, when she stays to go to college more locally and you're on the other end of the country because you're determined to get in to an amazing school.

Because the two of you can never fall entirely out of touch, even if you don't stay best friends--you've been together so long, you fought over something so trivial--you'll be okay.

But in the case of not wanting to pick that fight, you don't know what to do. You're in a rut, stuck, and as to which way is up, you have no idea. And the two of you in this situation fought for real reasons, and you never had the chance to be so close, even if they knew more about you. And even if they seem happy they're different too, and maybe you don't like this new them. Maybe this new version of them reminds you of the part of them you hated, magnified and blown up and you don't want to be near it. Your conversations now feel like they lack a spark, the slightest inkling of anyone caring what you say or how you feel or even bothering to remember what you were talking about.

So you go back to feeling neglected, and resign yourself to everything being like that.