Have you ever looked back on your life and been shocked by how much it has changed? Everyone changes; it is part of who we are. We evolve. Thing is, sometimes we change drastically. Sometimes it is as if we have become a whole different person in the flutter of a bird’s wing.

It has happened to me before, but never so dramatically as right now. At this moment in time, I am not who I was just eight months ago. Now I am irritable, negative, and paranoid. Back then I was different.

Back then I didn’t explode. Back then I didn’t bite the heads off my best friends with barely, if any, reason. Back then I was someone you likely would’ve wanted to know. Now, not as much.

People don’t seem to turn to me anymore, they don’t confide in me or take comfort in my presence anymore. The one thing that I had always been able to do-be a good friend-seems impossible.

I never thought I would lose such a huge part of who I was. I never thought I would become a burden on those that I love. But, this is what it seems I have become.

Hugs don’t come as readily and smiles are becoming increasingly rare. I am not a source of comfort or solace anymore. It hurts, deep in the atriums and ventricles. It sears like hot iron on the heart, leaving scars that run deeper than rivers. Friends don’t come to me anymore; they take my tears but not my touch. There is no affection, no love. We are all cold towards each other, our eyes like Arctic waters. We hardly ever look at each other anymore, our souls too distant to see properly.

Losing the people around us is hard to face, but to find that we have lost ourselves seems, at times, insurmountable. It is disheartening to find that you aren’t aware of who you are, that you have no idea who you have become. Literally, my stomach aches sometimes when I think about it.

If only there were some way to get it all back, some way to find myself again. If only there were some way to go back eight months and stop the ice from cracking. But, there is not. Going back in time, no matter how much we wish it so, is unachievable.

And, so now I am but a shell, more fragile, more breakable. I often feel like a pane of glass, with tiny microscopic cracks forming and spreading across my surface like devastating spider webs. Like roads upon a map these internal fissures distribute themselves through my soul and, in every corner, they invade my solidity.

It feels as if, at any moment, a hammer may come down upon me, shattering my being into uncountable bits of humanity. I don’t know that I will ever be able to fix these gaps. I don’t know that I will ever find my way through the hazy mists of myself to that place and time when there was something more.

But, these things happen. We shift and change, collapse and rebuild. We hold ourselves together the best that we can as the world changes around us. We leave each other and then come together again, and our affection does the same. We hold tightly to these personal connections, no matter how faint they become. We wrap ourselves in their warmth, knowing full well that, though they may grow distant, they can never sever completely.

We hold onto that which we know is good, that which helps to make us whole. For me, that piece of existence lies somewhere within these deeply rooted friendships, these unwavering, solid, human relations. No matter how isolated, how different, those relationships become, some trace of them will always be there. No matter how thin the threads between us may stretch, they will always stay intact, and never break. True, genuine friendship, an unbreakable bond.