The Friend Who Stayed

You didn't say the right thing. You didn't say anything. You just showed up with food and sat in my mess like it was your living room. That's friendship: not the greeting card, not the "I'm here if you need me" that everyone says and no one means— but the actual showing up. The ugly showing up. The 2 AM showing up. We met when we were stupid— too young to know what we were promising when we promised everything. And then life happened: the job, the marriage, the baby, the divorce, the silence that stretched like a rubber band that should have snapped but didn't. Because real friends don't keep score. Real friends lose touch and find it like keys you didn't know you had— still there, still fitting, still opening the same door. You are the person I don't have to perform for. The one who has seen me at my worst and stayed at my worst and made my worst feel surprisingly survivable. Thank you for staying.