you never realize that you’re driving a stake through the
middle of a friendship until it collapses suddenly and gives way, leaving a
yawning chasm between the two of you that cannot be crossed because you never
planned for this; all the wood for the bridge was on your friend’s side. you
cry, you mope, you gesticulate, you apologize, you scream—anything to try and
get your friend to try and send you some wood, for your friend to try and start
building a bridge, but there’s nothing. you don’t see anything happen from
their side. and so you try and do something to make a bridge on your end, but
no matter how hard you try, it just won’t stay. the soil is too soft in one
place, the material isn’t sturdy enough, the wind’s too strong. either way, as
the days tick along, the amount of effort that you put in to building this
bridge goes down, dwindling into the negative numbers as you start to uproot
all bridge-making material and just throwing it off of your island, burning it,
eating it, whatever. anything to get rid of it. and you can’t really remember
why you wanted to build a bridge in the first place, because it was your friend
who delivered the final blow to the stake that split the friendship right?
after all, it wasn’t your fault. it couldn’t have been your fault. because who
does things to themselves that are deliberately bad?
