It was never about being my own person. I just wanted to help someone asking for it. Whether or not she got it, I was cruel.

From the first day we met, she clung onto me for dear life. To her, I was so strong and perfect, confident and everything she wished she was. I didn’t ask for anything from her because in reality she couldn’t offer me much, but at the very least she was a loyal and dear friend. I wanted to get her out of her shell.

Slowly she started to worm her way into my life. Texting pestering questions, researching how I did my hair and makeup, calling when she was feeling sad. There would always be some emergency, some trauma resurfaced. And I would answer to do the right thing. I was her rock.

Pretty soon she would startle me with her long stares - eyes always watching me, dissecting every physical part of me, burrowing into my movements to figure out what made me “me.”

Out on the dance floors she would, when she thought I wasn’t noticing, study my body as it swayed and she would move like my shadow.

Over the next year, I found myself snappy, shortening my replies. I felt like hiding. Eventually I started making comments in rebuttal to her voice. The very memory of her voice grated my skull. I could not at the time remove myself because I was her everything, her symbol of rebirth.

One day I snapped and never replied. It was my first crisp breath after years of being smothered, of feeling exploited by her desperate gaze, of my space being violated. To this day I’m not sure if I was the bad one, but I am thankful to have been freed.