#sorry for my shit punctuation i'm pulling my second all-nighter of the year and can't be bothered to fix it

[alicegenre]

it didn't take long for your life's experience to fully eclipse mine. we were never going to be cherubic weirdos clad in eyeliner and fishnets forever, but i could never fully accept your kid-gloved debauchery—which was laughable at best—even when i had almost forgotten the time when we were practically the same.

college (dropout) boyfriend hickeys and shitty dispo nicotine lingered on you like the bruises and welts on your back—the ones from the night your mother took a metal rod to you, and the next day you showed up to class half out of uniform and told us you had run away.

"spare the rod, spoil the child," but not really. you never got anything from your parents, so you learned to ask the rest of the world to compensate. and you were never denied.

we were freshmen then. both transplants from greater, "artsier" pastures, who had been dealt the suspicion allotted to every big-thinking foreigner and the attention allotted to every fresh new starlet.

i think we both realized at the same time how almost small-town-like everyone here was. how easy they were. you reveled in it, becoming the center of it all, while i shrunk away from it. going from standing on desks and making punk flyers to slipping into the background, knowing my novelty would wear off. compressing myself until i couldn't be more visible than a speck of dust trapped in a musty car, only seen beneath the sunlight streaming through the window.

except when i was around you. especially when i was around you.

i hated how squeaky clean i felt next to you—so damn sheltered and waiting to live for once, yet too afraid to risk getting another beating of my own—but i hated the hint of superiority over you i allowed myself to feel because of it even more. i needed to take something for myself, i guess.

i was so fucked up, but you needed me to be your respite from it all—from the bag searches, from the break-ups, from the fallout. and i needed to be needed (now i just need to be seen). you hadn't the faintest idea of how to help yourself, but you got bored listening to anyone who tried to show you how, especially me.

i can't remember when i surrendered my personhood to you. it's like one day i woke up and it was gone. weighed on a scale opposite to a white feather and deemed worthy to fill the role of your confidant, relegated to the same role i filled when i was ten and didn't understand why no one wanted to play with me—a pet. you were gone too not long after.

but we were equals once. we were equals once. and i miss you.