“Is this why people think we’re a couple?” Gia asked a while back.

I tried to force myself not to think about those words ever since they escaped her mouth. Why did I care so much about such an obvious joke? There were never any deeper feelings, never any multifaceted sides to this “friendship.” I couldn’t understand why I looked at her so highly—so strongly that I started to question myself.

What did I love about Gia? Maybe it was the way she looked. Or spoke. Or acted. Maybe those hugs and those prolonged moments of eye contact made me see her as something more, as the black spot of paint on life’s white canvas. I knew Gia wasn’t my romantic, nor did she find our friendship nearly as special as I did. But I still daydreamed of her every moment she wasn’t in front of me. Gia, in contrast, could likely be out in the park with her friends, with the thought of me being replaced by the sounds of laughing children and swaying swings.

Attractiveness is something that is more so forced than chosen. Who to love and who not to love is not decided by you—it’s the little things that a person does which make the gray areas of your indecisive feelings clear. Even with that, I sometimes wish I could control my feelings indefinitely. I shouldn’t love Gia in this way. She sees me as a friend, and I try telling myself that I see her as one, too. But every message and every interaction raises my heart beat enough to the point where I have to question my true feelings—my true intentions for this “friendship.”

Where am I planning to go with this connection we’ve built? Am I supposed to say nothing so our friendship lasts eternally? Am I supposed to say something in the hopes that we become more than such a friendship? The latter has somewhat of an evident answer; no, we won’t become what I hope we will. But the image of “eternally” rubs me the wrong way. How long would I have to live this lie until I eventually pass away with Gia crying by my side, never once knowing how I truly felt about her?

“Love” is too strong of a word to be used so oddly casually. To the heartbroken, loving someone as a friend is as shallow as it sounds. In a way, though, I never desired to love her as more than a friend. I always thought it was for the best not to like a person, since having such a big part of your mental health centered around one human being comes with the side effect of a heartbreaking reality. The person you love can either make your day, or ruin it; and whether you like it or not, your love-stricken mind prevents you from ever letting go.

I guess that’s what prevented us from “letting go,” as if this was almost exactly as I predicted. For us to be subjected to the normality of friends who only call each other as such because we’ve become too used to it. I could only take so many “do you like her?” and “are you guys a thing?” questions from others until I became sick of them; I became sick of lying to myself, of holding on to this belief that one day my feelings for Gia may become so simplified that I could answer those questions with only a ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ But they still manage to confuse my thoughts about her even more. Is she more of a friend? Less of a friend? Who really is she in my eyes?

I dug myself an even bigger hole as we only got closer and closer. Every call, every walk home together, every hug, every conversation, anything we ever did or said––they were all just distractions from the piercing reality that Gia herself was one. Every opportunity I had to say something, to finally accept thoughts I didn’t understand, would painfully stay in and only in my mind for months on end. I found Gia so special to me that it deceived me into thinking that revealing how I truly felt about her could end things entirely. This was something I knew I would have to bear if I wanted to avoid any sort of change. So, I decided. In the end, I thought it best to prevent myself from confessing to the girl I called one of my greatest friends.

I felt ashamed of my feelings. In my lowest points I just wanted to bury them in the past indefinitely to have full control over my mind. Overtime, I felt more and more forced to distance myself from Gia so I can stop thinking about her so much to the point where it hurts. Except it also hurts to be distant. It hurts to look across the sidewalk and see a girl you never used to force yourself to walk away from just to avoid the awkward silence of speechlessness, as if you both know there was a connection between the two of you that has now grown rotten and stale.

I know Gia and I will eventually move on. Maybe we’ll find better friends. Better companions. Better relationships. I know it’s okay for her to love who she wants to love. I know it’s okay for me to love who I want to love. But did I love her for our relationship, or for the idea of us being in one? I feel like such a terrible person for thinking of that, as if I’m implying that I built a bond with Gia solely to get closer to her romantically––as if I didn’t see her as a person, but as a tool to enhance my own life. I wanted to be a better friend despite this, but it was that selfish love which blinded me. It only made me grow to hate the thought of loving her.

In reality, I was forced to love Gia when I didn’t want to love her; not because I felt she was unworthy of love, but because I felt she was so worthy of love that loving her became the only option. And perhaps that was the sole cause of our downfall. Because as I notice our “hi’s” and “bye’s” sounding less enthusiastic each day, our hugs feeling less tight, our walks back home feeling drier, our conversations feeling silent, our messages feeling stale, and everything in between… I take it all in and wonder just how we got to this point. And then I start to realize.

This is what love does to fake friendships.