temporary goodbye

Sometimes I still scroll through our text messages
nearly two years old now, no one's added a thing since May 2021
and of course no one will, because everything we wrote in there was
from back when we were a group, the three of us, back before everything
you did
and everything
I did
finally made me leave, thinking I could find something better, something shinier.
And I guess I always secretly insecure that one year we were best friends--
I thought I had to act interesting for you, thought I had to change myself.
(I was wrong.)
And as I drifted away, you got annoyed
you thought I didn't care but I'd finally reached my limit
I just
couldn't
~take~
any more of it.
I found other friends, and I liked them,
and I still do.
And I guess I never stopped being friends with you.
We still talk during our classes, we still go to each other's houses.
But we're not--
what we used to be
what we could have been
if I hadn't left.
I thought it was the right decision back then,
but now, I don't know.
You weren't blameless, of course,
but neither was I.
And even though you made me mad 
(sometimes)
and that's what I choose to remember
(most of the time)
there were also the times when we were just hanging out,
talking,
three friends, three dots on a screen
times when I thought we'd work, 
that I'd found where I belonged,
and maybe I had.
guess I'll never know.

I scroll and scroll
farther up, through meaningless goodbyes
through gifs replaying in an endless loop
through ikrs and lols and lmaos
and sometimes I wonder what I was thinking as I wrote 
my simple little messages.
Did I think I'd won the lottery?
Was I scared I'd say something that weirded you out?
Was I relieved when you responded to my hellos with an even-more-cheerful one?
When did I start
to doubt?
Last year I thought what I did was the right choice, and now--
I don't think it was wrong, but I'm not sure it was right either.
Maybe we could be close again,
one day,
maybe one year we'll be in homeroom together, and we'll talk, and 
it'll feel like no time has passed.
But until then, I ex out of our text chain
hopefully for good
and my mind sends one last message
a temporary goodbye.