January 6, 2025—a date carved into the marrow of my bones. The night I let go of the girl who once felt like oxygen. The girl who stood by me when the world turned its back, who sang me back to life long before I knew I’d need saving.
We met at her singing audition. I still remember how her voice cracked on the high note of her song, how she laughed afterward, cheeks flushed, shrugging at the judges like it didn’t matter. But it did—to me. That laugh became my compass. When I was drowning in self-doubt, she’d hum that random song while doing her hair, off-key and unashamed, just to pull a smile from me. Now, her voice fades a little more each day, and I’m terrified of the silence it leaves behind.
I wanted to build a future worthy of her. Late nights in the library, textbooks devoured under flickering lamps—I thought if I graduated top of my class, if I secured that job, if I proved myself, she’d never want for anything. But ambition is a thief. I canceled calls to finish papers. I forgot anniversaries buried beneath deadlines. When she texted “Can we talk? I miss your voice,” I replied “After this test, I promise.” After became never.
She cried during those unanswered calls, I learned later. Cried quietly, the way she did when she didn’t want to burden anyone. “You’re not here anymore,” she once said, and I argued instead of listening. I didn’t see how her texts grew shorter, how her “goodnight <3” became just “night.” I didn’t realize she’d stopped singing altogether.
The end came over the phone. Finals week. My dorm was eerily silent—no roommates laughing, no keyboards clattering. Just her trembling voice, thin as mist, saying, “I don’t feel the same anymore.” I wanted to scream. To beg. To rewind to the night she first sang to me and say, “This. This is enough.” Instead, I let her go with a lie: “Maybe it’s for the best.”
Now, her absence is a ghost limb. Nights are the worst. No more texts about her annoying sister, or how the stray dog by her house finally let her pet it. No more voice notes of her rambling about nothing, just to hear me say “I’m here.” I deleted our photos, our messages, every trace—except the whale keychain she gave me before I further my studies, its fur matted from nights I’ve held it like a lifeline. Except the Valentine’s card she made, glitter peeling off the words “To My Forever.”
When I saw her new highlight with her new boyfriend—I could imagine his arm around her waist—I vomited. She’s wearing the necklace I saved months to buy. But she’s radiant. He brings her flowers. He answers when she calls. And I’m glad, in a way that cracks my ribs open, because she deserves this. She deserves someone who doesn’t love her in the quiet spaces between their dreams.
The card stays. I trace her handwriting when the guilt suffocates me. The ink is smudged where she pressed too hard, like she wanted the words to outlast us. Maybe they will.
I don’t know if “forever” exists. But if it does, I’d trade every accolade, every sleepless night of studying, to sit with her again on that audition room floor. To say, “Your voice is enough. You are enough.” To keep her song alive.
For now, I’m learning to live with the echoes.