Reflection

I Didn’t Leave the Friend — I Left the Copy.

He didn’t follow me. He followed my light.

We met in high school. Didn’t really connect until a few years in — but when it clicked, it locked in. Music did it — the tuning fork that aligned us before we knew the cost. It felt like discovery. Resonance. Brotherhood.

Until it wasn’t.

We had a dream. Dropped out. Stacked cash. Formed a band. Moved into a lake house with our drummer. Wrote songs. Smoked weed. Took tech support calls to pay rent. It was absurd, but it was ours.

Then he got comfortable. Cheap rent. Easy days. The plan to move to the city — to level up — dissolved into inertia. I pushed. He didn’t. And the friend I expected to back me up stayed silent.

When that collapsed, we started over. New sound. New gear. I dropped the guitar. Picked up a bass. Built everything from scratch. He barely acknowledged it. I wanted him to. I shouldn’t have.

Friends used to joke about how he mirrored people. But at some point, I became the mirror. The more I tried to grow, the more I watched my outline move without me.

We moved into a rough neighborhood. Then again — to one even rougher.

That’s where it happened. One night. A shared moment. A kiss. Something unspoken but present. I wasn’t sure what it could become. I was still on the fence. But then he claimed her. Said it outright, after drinks — they were a thing now. She showed up at the house. And left his room, not mine. Some betrayals aren’t loud. They just rearrange the room permanently.

That same period, I was mugged at gunpoint outside our house. It rattled something deep in me. I didn’t talk about it. He didn’t ask. That kind of silence doesn’t leave. It taught me the wrong lesson — that danger arrives quietly, and so does abandonment.

Later, we pushed out a longtime bandmate. The house shifted after that. New tensions filled the space he left behind. Eventually, she moved in. Everything changed.

Then the losses stacked. One of our former bandmates took his own life. He was the one who told me. I still remember where I was — walking through a rental lot at the airport. But when I brought it up later — tried to talk about it — he shrugged. Said it was bound to happen. Like grief was a script he didn’t believe in.

My great-grandfather passed. Then his wife. And then, my father — gone in a wreck. I was days from flying overseas for work. Canceled everything. Grief hit like a brick through glass. Some cracks spread. Some reveal what was already hollow.

When I lost my father a couple years later, I didn’t know how to ask for support. And he didn’t know how to offer it.

That’s when I understood: he didn’t just mirror people. He absorbed them. And the truth is, I did too. We both got lost in the reflection.

He led in music. Always could write a song on a dime. But outside the song — he never took a stance. That’s how he dodged every blow, while still claiming the chorus. He could write a song in minutes — but life required choices, not riffs.

I spiraled. Drinking. Psychedelics. It didn’t feel like our house anymore. It felt like theirs. I moved through it like I was on borrowed air — quiet, cautious, unsure if I belonged. Maybe they knew I was breaking down. But they didn’t know why. Because I never said. That’s how rot works. It thrives in omission.

His taste still mirrored mine. He parroted my words, my moods, my posture. It wasn’t theft. It was erasure. People stopped knowing where I ended and he began. Nothing rots identity faster than applause for the wrong person.

And I wasn’t innocent. I stayed too long. Swallowed resentment until it fermented. Let the mirror talk for me.

We moved again. Nicer house. Higher rent. The silence got louder.

That’s when I started waking up. I lost weight. Got clean. Left my job. Went back to school. And when I did, the reflection didn’t match anymore. It didn’t belong.

So I stopped performing. I didn’t chase. I didn’t beg. I just wrote. And when that didn’t bring him back, I stopped.

I just left.

I started leaving the room when they walked in. I didn’t want to see myself arriving again.

Years now. Silence. Not out of cruelty. Out of necessity.

But I didn’t want it this way. I never planned for the silence to be permanent.

I’ve reached out since. Quiet birthday emails. Not performative. I meant them. He never answered.

Sometimes I got angry. Said too much online. I regret that part. Not because I was wrong — but because it didn’t matter. The mirror was already broken.

He had his father erase all the recordings. Some still survive online — accounts he can’t scrub. That’s how I know it happened. We built something. He just doesn’t want to remember.

Now I hear they’ve changed. Deep into slogans. Righteous causes. All the theater we once mocked. They chant now. Conviction without self‑awareness is just performance in uniform.

But didn’t we already try the commune? Didn’t it collapse under the weight of no one leading? Didn’t we already live the thing they pretend to believe?

Because being near someone who studies you to become you is a kind of death. And I finally wanted to live.

I didn’t unfriend him. I didn’t block him.

I just stopped handing over the mirror.

If he ever wants a face, he’ll have to build one — not borrow mine.