"We need to talk," I say. "We need to talk, but you're not going to like what I have to say."
That is never a good way to begin a conversation. It brings a certain sense of doom and foreboding. Something is wrong, it says, and not knowing what will drive you crazy. If it were up to me, the conversation would never take place at all. You would continue happily on in your existence and your belief that everything is as it should be, and I would go... away. I don't want to care, I'm tired of caring. But something inside me shouts, and I have to pay it heed. And so I set things in motion. The ball is rolling, and the truth will come out, whether I want it to or not. Ominous foreshadowing, that was my insurance. My proof against weak justifications and weaker resolve.
Tomorrow is an end. Simultaneously, it is a beginning. A beginning of what, I am not certain, and in the uncertainty lies fear. What will tomorrow bring? At very least I see discomfort for one, probably both of us. Averted eyes and uncomfortable silences, not quite sure what lines come next in the script. I have written and stricken and rewritten them so many times, these lines, this script, playing it out in my mind, and I still haven't found one course that seems more likely than the rest. I really have no idea what you will say, and it terrifies me. It terrifies me because I see an end to our friendship, to everything we have built, with nothing to fill the void, and I am alone.
And yet. To live is to risk, and the path without this risk is much darker than with it. I cannot go on hiding and pretending. Subconciously I have decided that in order to carry on as your friend, I must become your enemy. There is no logic in this decision, I did not choose it willingly, but there it is. If I cannot stand and face my doubt, if I cannot risk what we have to save it, then I will most certainly lose it. To call you my friend means the world to me, and if the only way I can save that is by coming clean of what is destroying it, then come clean I must. Come clean I will.
Remember that when I look you in the eyes tomorrow and bare my soul. Remember it and judge me not too harshly. I would not ask more.