Epilogue.

There’s something especially hurtful about misunderstandings; the indignation, the surprise that the alliance wasn’t mature enough to automatically troubleshoot it, the newfound bitterness at the time and energy you’ve willingly invested in someone else’s happiness at the expense of your own, the fact that care was convoluted into malice and all that was once shared in confidence turned into ammunition, the paranoid belief of an ulterior motive, but most of all, it’s the memories. Good memories hurt so much more than bad memories, merely because of the potential they held, the hope they condoned, the dependence that took both for granted. Does it ever really get old? Has evolution truly found a way around it? Why does it keep happening? Do people really need it that much to not learn that they’re perhaps better off without it?

 

Perhaps the cherry on top of the crap cracker is the fact that you will not lift a toe to fix it, because sometimes, when something that important goes wrong, it makes you doubt whether it was worth its assigned value or if you’d miscalculated the person’s place.

 

A good sign is the fact that you will not feel any of the above, or anything at all, as you watch the other person hilariously writhe in imaginary pain at what they’ve misconstrued of your words, and it makes you feel somewhat grateful that of the two, you were the one who was truly free.