The Girl

The me I've gotten to know is changing. Words I have clung to that have shaped the way I think of myself slip away, no longer applicable.
Its like I am shedding a skin that I have been wrapped so tightly in, and I am afraid that once it is gone I will fall apart.
I am scared to embrace new things, to change and grow. It feels like I am abandoning the person I was, a person who I will never be again.
For so long I have been my own closest friend, only because no one else was around, but that has changed. Just like everything does.
How am I supposed to leave the friend who has always been there for me?
You don't leave people. You don't walk away from a friend you still love.
But what happens when that friend evaporates? Dissapears without so much a puff of smoke or dazzling cloud burst... she just faded.
I can't find that girl anymore. No matter how hard I look. All she left behind are shimmering memories that bend and sway under the weight of time, twisting out of shape as life pulls at their edges.
At first there is an ache.
And tears. Lots of tears.
But those are always there.

When I open my eyes, I see a different girl standing with me.
She is familiar and warm, but new and strange all at once.
I don't know her anymore.
She stretches out her hand to me and we walk, together.
Time has changed us, as it does all things.
I have to learn how to love this new old friend, re-imagining the borders and edges that are expanding to let us become the person we will be.