Like Eating Glass: The Thing Beneath "I'm Fine"

Lately, therapy has been heavy.

Shadow work. Journaling. Reflection. The kind of work that does not only ask, What happened to you? but also, What did you do while you were still trying to survive what happened to you?

That second question is harder.

It is one thing to look at the harm that shaped me. It is another to look at the harm I caused while living inside it.

For a long time, I did not understand how I lost certain friendships. I understood the pain of losing them, but not always the mechanics. Not the moment where something I thought was small, honest, or already discussed became something that hurt someone else.

Recently, I was talking to my brother about a friendship I lost years ago. A friendship that still hurts because I loved this person very much.

I still do.

She had a laugh that made your laugh burst out with it. We held silliness in tandem, without embarrassment. There was a freedom in being ridiculous with her, the kind of friendship where joy did not need to be translated or explained.

I loved her world too. I could talk to her parents. I could be silly and dumb with her twin brother. There was ease there. A whole family rhythm I was allowed to step into for a while. It was fun. It was safe. It was the kind of belonging I did not know how to hold carefully enough at the time.

I told my brother I never fully understood what I had done wrong. In my mind, I had been honest. There were people she had liked, or had history with, and I thought we had talked about it. I thought she had moved on. I thought I had checked in.

In one situation, I didn’t even really like the person at first. I liked someone else. I was even trying to talk her up to him. But he pursued me, not her. Eventually, I ended up liking him, and somehow, in the mess of all of it, I lost her.

For years, my brain stayed stuck there.

But I asked her.

But she said she was fine.

But I was honest.

But I didn’t mean to hurt her.

That was always the part I returned to: intention.

I didn’t intend to harm her, so I struggled to understand the impact.

Then I told my brother something I had always believed about myself. I said that when I was younger, if a guy liked one of my friends instead of me, I would tell my friend to go for it. I didn’t care. If he didn’t like me, why would I fight for him? Why would I be bothered?

My brother stopped me.

“Did you hear yourself?”

I did.

I heard it as soon as he said it.

It didn’t matter to me because I didn’t matter to me.

That was the thing I had never understood.

The “girl code,” the friendship rule, whatever name we give it, did not register the same way for me because I had never applied that kind of protection to myself. I didn’t know how to make myself important in a situation. I didn’t know how to say, This hurts me. This embarrasses me. This makes me feel replaced. This makes me feel small.

So when other people had those feelings, I did not always recognize them clearly.

Not because I didn’t care.

I cared deeply.

But I had been trained to override myself so completely that I did not always know when someone else was asking me, silently, not to override them too.

My friend valued herself enough to know when something hurt her.

I didn’t.

Because I didn’t, I mistook her silence for permission. I took her words at face value even when I could feel something underneath them. I knew something was off. I could feel that she wasn’t fully okay.

But I did not trust what I felt.

I had spent most of my life being taught not to trust what I felt.

So I accepted the answer that was easiest to understand.

“I’m fine.”

But she wasn’t fine.

And I should have asked more.

I should have said, “Are you actually okay with this, or are you saying that because it feels easier?”

I should have listened to the discomfort in the room, to the part of me that knew there was something unsaid between us. I should have cared enough about both of us to slow down.

That is where the grief lives now.

Not in the guy.

Never in the guy.

It was never worth losing her.

Even after I lost her as a friend, I still talked about her with love. I still told him what an amazing person she was. I still carried the friendship in my chest as something precious, even after I had damaged it. My brain could not register that I had lost someone who mattered more to me than anything I gained.

But I did.

I lost her.

And I hurt her.

There is a specific kind of pain in realizing that your lack of self-worth did not only hurt you. It made you careless in places where you thought you were being generous. It made you passive where you should have been protective. It made you accept crumbs and call it normal, then fail to understand why someone else would not accept the same.

I have spent so much of my life not thinking I was enough. Not thinking I mattered. Not understanding my own mind, my own needs, my own intuition. I have pushed people away with that. I have run from people with that. I have hurt people with that.

And I am sorry.

I am sorry for not listening to what she could not fully say.

I am sorry for not listening to myself when I felt the truth sitting beneath the conversation.

I am sorry that I treated her answer like a contract instead of treating her discomfort like something worthy of care.

I know now that communication is not only about what someone says. It is also about what trembles underneath it.

It is about asking again, gently.

It is about making room for the truth to be complicated.

It is about knowing that sometimes people say they are okay because they do not want to seem jealous, hurt, needy, or small.

And sometimes people believe them because believing them is easier than risking the harder conversation.

I wish I had risked the harder conversation.

There are moments when I wish I could still be in her life. To laugh with her. To cry with her. To hold her. To see who she became.

Years have passed. Whole lives have happened in the space between who we were and who we are now. There have been joys I did not get to witness and griefs I did not get to help carry. That is part of the ache too — knowing that when life asked for love, I was no longer close enough to offer mine.

But I also know that right now, I am still learning how to show up with care. I am still becoming someone who can love without reaching from the wound first.

So I will love her from here.

I hope she is well. I hope she is loved. I hope she is cared for. I believe she is. She has people who love her. She has family. She has a friend I trust with her heart.

And I hope, somehow, she knows that I understand more now than I did then.

It was not worth it.

None of it was worth the pain.

But I know better now.

I am learning to listen.

To myself.

To the silence.

To the thing beneath the words.

And wherever she is, I hope she knows this:

I am sorry.

I love you.

I hope you are well.