She’s someone I call my friend. We live nearby, share meals, trade stories, laugh over gossip, and analyze life the way close friends do. Or so I believed.

 When it comes to my world, she knows everything, my fears, my plans, my uncertainties. If a man shows interest and I’m still deciding what to do, she hears about it first. I’ve handed her my trust without reservation.

But with her, I’m always the last to know.

I discovered she had started her master’s degree by chance, not because she told me. By the time I asked, she was already enrolled, already attending lectures, already deep into the experience.

 Her explanation was that she wanted to be “sure” before mentioning it. To me, it felt less like caution and more like exclusion.

Then she traveled out of the country. Again, no word from her, just a social media post announcing her absence. When I questioned her, she said it was meant to be a surprise. 

She later returned with a bottle of perfume, as if a gift could soften the ache of being left out of something so significant.

The pattern continued. A new job came and went before I heard about it. She brushed it off, saying it wasn’t a big deal. I smiled and let it go, but the hurt lingered. Each silence felt like another quiet reminder that I was not as close to her life as she was to mine.

The most painful revelation came recently: she has been attending counseling in preparation for marriage to a man she has never once mentioned to me. Not a name. Not a hint. I didn’t hear it from her but from someone else, who was shocked that I didn’t know. She asked me plainly if we were truly friends.

That question has been echoing in my mind. How can two people be so physically close, so intertwined in daily routines, yet so distant in truth? How can someone sit in my space, share my food, laugh with me, and still keep an entire life hidden? It began to feel as though I was trusted with her time, but not with her happiness.

I haven’t confronted her about the wedding. Not yet. I’m waiting, watching to see if she will finally tell me herself or allow me to find out the way I always do, through whispers and accidents. It hurts to feel treated like a bad omen, as if sharing good news with me could somehow invite misfortune or jealousy.

If she gets married without telling me, I already know my next step. I will have one honest conversation with her, then quietly step away.

 Not out of anger, but out of exhaustion. I’m tired of loving someone who stands firmly in the center of my life while keeping me on the margins of hers.