D

I have a friend called D.

Well, not really a friend, more like a persistent acquaintance who has popped in and out of my life for the better part of a decade.

From the outside it seems clear maybe that she is no good for me. That she haunts me. But it’s not so simple.

I’ll tell you the truth: I hate her and I love her. I hate how I feel after she has come by and shut me away from all of my friends to selfishly hoard me to herself. How she made me so used to her company and made me dependent on what little she gives me and then left me. After all that. As a stripped back husk. Incapable. Incapable. Incapable. Alone.

And yet I feel that she must love me. To cling to me so desperately, there must be some love there. And even as she changes the very fabric of my mind I love her familiarity. I have known her since I was a teenager and I know her so well I can sniff her out on other people. I can’t help but wonder sometimes, who would I be without her. But also who I COULD be without her.

D.

It will always be complicated.

But sometimes when she is gone. I mean really gone, no trace of her for days. When I have stretched out my tenseness and expanded to my fullest. I realize it then.

That I like who I am when she is not there.