So.

How simple life was when you were younger.
I smile sadly at the concept, wedged into a chair meant for butts smaller than mine. I shift a little, and the chair creaks beneath my weight.
My current job in a daycare always keeps me in contact with little children. I look out at the playground set out in front of me.
Girls run from the boys, screaming about the fatal disease of cooties. A group of older children is coloring, the younger children gazing on in wonder at how they stay inside the lines. A little boy puts the finishing touch on a tower of building blocks, then smiles a malicious smile and kicks the tower, sending the blocks towering to the ground. An hour he's been building that tower, and only swift seconds were spent destroying it.
A metaphor, it feels like, for my life at the moment.
Or rather a metaphor for my friendship with you.
It wasn't too long ago when our "tower" reached its peak. At the time, our inside jokes rumored in the hundreds - just looking at you sent me into peals of laughter. No awkward silences, just comfortable moments reflecting on things. Hours spent on the phone, talking about nothing at all, and everything in particular. How well things were, and how bad they got. I can't pinpoint exactly when things got awry. The calls got less frequent. The comfortable moments stopped and turned into shifting eyes, stutters of, "sooo...".
I felt that I was to blame. I had taken part in this cycle of friendship so many times before, and always things ended badly. Surely, there was something wrong with me. With my personality.
How we tried to save it. And how it didn't help.
You tried to call me, and I paced around my house, anxious to think of things to say. Nothing would come to mind and I'd race to say something, anything, to keep you on the line, but the magical glimmer was gone from our friendship. The spark had long been gone, anyway, and we lapsed into a pattern of avoidance. We have the same friends, so it's not exactly easy to avoid you. My eyes catch yours, and you look away quickly. I follow suit.
I used to be funny around you, but I lost it. The comfort had left, and the humor wasn't far behind.
You don't have a hard time keeping up the jokes; I see you bonding comfortably with everyone around me.
I try to crack a joke, begin to tell it, and falter under your questioning gaze.
I don't really remember a time when your opinion took on such importance, but now it does.
I'm scared of your judging. I know that you can see through my laughter, my cover up, to the person within. And that in itself is scary enough.
I'm jolted out of my train of thought - the boy has begun rebuilding his tower, and he's laughing as he stacks block unto block, shooing away kids who want to help. He doesn't mind the time he just spent building the tower only to topple it to the ground. It doesn't matter to him that it will take him atleast an hour to rebuild it.
But I doubt fate will play out in the same way for us.