Carbon Monoxide Friendship

It started slow.
They always do.

The small betrayals aren’t the kind you can name—they build quietly, molecule by molecule, like carbon monoxide in the air. You don’t smell it. You don’t see it. You just start feeling tired all the time.

Wouldn’t it be something if we had detectors for that kind of thing? A low, steady beep when a friendship shifts from exchange to extraction.

At first, you tell yourself it’s nothing. A shorter visit. A conversation that leaves you lighter in energy, heavier in spirit. You explain it away, like everyone does. But the pattern keeps repeating.

You start realizing that the warmth you thought was mutual has turned into maintenance. That you’re showing up out of habit, not hope. That what used to refuel you now drains you.

And then one day you catch the scent of something burning—the edges of the connection charred from neglect and that kind of quiet taking that pulls all the oxygen out of the room.

You don’t want to see it at first. Seeing it means admitting how long you’ve been holding up both sides. It means counting all the times you showed up and they didn’t. All the conversations where you asked how they were doing and they never asked back. All the energy you poured into keeping something alive that died quietly months ago while you were still watering it.
The betrayal isn’t that they left—it’s that they found a better outlet, and you were the only one who didn’t know.
You were still showing up to a friendship that had become an encore performance for an audience of one.
And the loneliest part? Realizing you were never the audience. You were the stage.

So you open a window to let that faint odor escape—the one that was making you queasy. You start to breathe. The air is thin, but it’s yours again.