You have spoiled me. Taught me to love myself just a little more. Reminded me that I am not as bad as I make myself out to be. You have accepted and you have cared and you have listened. Maybe just a little too much.

And that is why sometimes, when I talk to you in my head I freeze. I trip over the words I am thinking because I brake suddenly.

Because I am afraid. Of you, of what we have, of myself, of how you make me feel, of the future, of everything. A kind of choking fear that drowns out all rational thought. That takes all that's bad and then compounds it. Momentary, but overpowering.

A fear that I am not good enough for you. Too young, too immature, too annoying, too plain, too excitable, too far away.

A fear that we were never supposed to get together, that we will never work.

A fear that what we have is just too good to be true. Combined with a fear that maybe we don't have anything at all and that we're just deluding ourselves into believing we do.

A fear that one day you will wake up and realize that I am not as strong or well-read or smart or verbose or interesting as you first thought.

A fear that one day I'll just push too hard with something I say or do and that final straw is what will make you decide enough is enough.

A fear that maybe I've used up all the good that I'm supposed to get in my lifetime and that if this goes away, you go away, I will never ever get any more because no one person gets to have that much.

And on top of all of that, combined with all of that, the fear that you will get bored of me. That if I don't try hard enough to keep you, you'll leave.

All of it is as simple as that. And as complicated as that.

I have no idea what I would do without you.

I don't deal very well with change. Which is not the most effective way to be because well, as the cliche goes, change is the most constant thing in the world.

We are changing every minute, every second; both physically and mentally, constantly.

The thing about change and friendships is that while people become friends for multiple reasons, those reasons can change over time. While once people connected over mutual shared interests, maybe they grow to become friends who need each other for support during difficult times. While sometimes adversity can build a friendship, when things get back to normal, that relationship might just not work anymore. There are work friends who you never meet outside work and friends with whom you never discuss work.

The thing is, usually when people are friends, they get to grow and change together. Sometimes even affecting the changes in each other (and nope, I'm not talking about girls' periods syncing up). Friends figure out life together, or try to at least. They are with each other through changing ideologies and new discoveries, heartbreaks and recoveries. When the changes happen the process feels gradual, organic. You get to adapt and even if those changes don't sit well with you, you grow into them with time.

Then there's the long-distance friendships (LDFs). Friendships where talking happens once in six months and meetings, once in a year. Friendships which devolve into acquaintanceships. Friends who disappear because out of sight is out of mind.

And while you're dealing with the challenges inherent in maintaining LDFs, you don't have the advantage of adapting to change. In that half-yearly conversation six months' of change and growth is thrown at you. In that yearly meeting, you have three hours to adapt to a different person from the one you knew a year ago.

What if you don't even like the new person anymore? You haven't had that gradual acceptance and what if you, at the stage you are at, do not feel like you are friends at all? What then? You speak to each other and your mind cannot process and you feel like maybe the new people you have turned into cannot be friends. You sit across from someone you grew up with and suddenly you realize that the people you are, aren't compatible.

What then?

How do you deal with the fact that you don't even like the person you once loved?

Is it shock? A reaction to too much information in too little time? Something that will go away with that magic word - time?

Or is it the death knell of a friendship?

How do you cope?

Sigh.