just a crayon

 

My fault.

It’s always my fault. This phrase has been ingrained in my mind ever since the third grade. I had borrowed my friend’s favorite green crayon and lost it. We both lost something that day. I lost a friend, and she lost a crayon. I cried and pleaded with her to stop being angry with me. I even ran to the store to get her a new one (for $1.75). She eventually forgave me after that, but things were never the same since then.

*

Everybody leaves. It’s inevitable, really. I know that by now. And with every passing person that discards me, it gets a little easier. It hurts a little less.

I have lost so many best friends over the past eighteen years of my life. I have lost so many friends I used to call family. But I suppose, if I’ve lost them, then maybe they weren’t family after all.

Maybe it was me, maybe it was them – maybe it was a number of factors that I could have never understood or the timing “just wasn’t right.” I know that a lot of times people make decisions, it is based on them – it isn’t really about me at all. But what if it is about me? What if I said too many things – too many stupid things that I couldn’t take back?

Sometimes I wonder if people can be addicted to being alone. It’s easy, you know? To live life so unafraid of what other people think because no matter what they say, they don’t truly know you. But here’s the truth. I am afraid. I am so afraid that I am the reason that people leave. That all my failed relationships and friendships have been snuffed out because of me.

What if it is my fault? What if this whole time I’ve been trying to blame external factors when it just simply is my fault? Then what? Tell me, dear readers, because I am stuck. Tell me what I can do, what I can say to make everything better because this time, I don’t think it’s going to be just a crayon that I am losing.

 

 

Leave a comment