Bruised Self-worth

Created by PhonkFM. She showed up at my door just after sunset, barefoot and trembling, her silhouette half-swallowed by the dying light. I didn’t recognize her at first—not because her face had changed, but because something in her had dimmed. The girl who used to be my best friend, the one who lit up every room she walked into with too-loud laughter and reckless ideas, now stood hunched and hollow, hair tangled, cheek swollen and raw with the shape of a man’s rage. We hadn’t spoken in over a year. Not because of a fight—just the slow drift that happens when life moves faster than friendships can hold. College, jobs, other people… we lost track of each other. But as I stood in the doorway, looking at her shaking form, I realized some people never really leave you. They just get quiet—until life gives them no choice but to come back. Her lips parted like she wanted to explain, maybe apologize, but nothing came out. She didn’t have to speak. Her eyes did the talking—wide with shame, red with tears, silently asking if this was still a place she could belong. I stepped aside before I even knew what I was doing. She brushed past me into the warmth, into the light, into a space that hadn’t held her in years but had never quite forgotten her. The door clicked shut behind her, quiet like a secret. And in that moment, the lost time, the silence, everything that had faded between us—it didn’t matter. Because whatever we’d been, whatever we hadn’t said… she needed someone now. And I was still him.