moon

summer 2025. i was insanely bored trying to find some minecraft smp to play on when i randomly stumbled across a server called chickened in smp. the whole thing had a comforting vibe to it. the community was small, welcoming, and felt a lot more personal than most servers i had joined before.

while looking through the members list one day, i noticed the owner listening to one of my favorite artists at the time. i thought why not ask about it. looking back, that tiny decision ended up changing a huge part of my life.

her name was moon.

at first it was just music. we talked about artists we liked, songs we had on repeat, random things happening throughout the day. later i offered to make some plugins for the server and somehow that turned into us talking more and more every single day. what started as casual messages slowly became long conversations, then daily conversations, then daily vc calls.

somehow two hours became five. five became ten. and before i even realized it, talking to moon had become part of my everyday life.

moon had a boyfriend at the time. his name was ben, and they were together in real life too. but surprisingly, me and ben actually got along really well. he never seemed bothered by me and moon being close, and i genuinely respected him for that.

what made moon different wasn’t any single moment. there wasn’t some dramatic turning point where i suddenly became attached. she just kept showing up. she was the one reaching out first, the one asking if i wanted to vc, the one checking up on me. for the first time in a long time, it felt like somebody genuinely wanted to be my best friend. and that meant more to me than i could explain.

she convinced me to face reveal for the first time in my life. looking back, that sounds like such a small thing, but back then it wasn’t. i hated how i looked. i avoided showing myself to people whenever i could. yet somehow she made me feel comfortable enough to trust her, comfortable enough to be seen.

she listened to things i never thought i’d tell anybody, things i normally kept buried, things i didn’t even know how to explain properly. and somehow she always knew what to say.

moon was one of the sweetest people i had ever met. she had this energy that made everything feel easier. we could talk about literally anything and never get bored. sometimes we’d spend hours talking about something serious, other times we’d spend hours laughing over the dumbest thing imaginable. every conversation somehow became a memory.

i actually started saving clips from our calls. at first it was just a few funny moments, then more, then hundreds. eventually i started making entire compilations out of them. hours of clips, hours of memories. i used to rewatch them constantly, not because they were edited well, but because they reminded me of her.

for a while, life felt simple. moon was always there, i was always there, and even when we argued, i never doubted that we’d figure things out.

because yes, we argued. sometimes a lot. i’ll admit i messed up plenty of times too. but there were moments where she would get upset over things i genuinely never intended to hurt her with. being too dry, not texting enough, making jokes about things she deeply cared about. sometimes it felt like we were speaking completely different languages. over time it became exhausting for both of us, but somehow we always found our way back.

eventually the arguments became less frequent. we became closer again, sweeter again. and honestly, that’s probably when i became the most attached. because despite everything, she was still there. she had become one of the only people i genuinely talked to, one of the only people i trusted, one of the only people i couldn’t imagine losing.

months later, i had my own server called paradox where i’d vc with friends all the time. naturally, i invited moon too. one day one of my friends invited a guy named reflux. both him and moon were portuguese, and they clicked instantly.

at first i didn’t think much of it. people make friends all the time. but slowly something started feeling different. they spent more and more time together, and eventually i noticed that me and moon were spending less and less time together.

i talked to her about it. i told her i was scared of being replaced, that i missed how things used to be, that i still wanted to feel like her number one person. and to her credit, she tried to reassure me. she told me i’d always be her xaixai, always her priority, always important to her. for a little while, i believed it. i wanted to believe it. but eventually i realized the words weren’t changing what i was seeing. she was still spending most of her time with reflux, we were still drifting further apart, and i was still sitting there wondering what happened.

the part that hurt wasn’t reflux. it wasn’t jealousy, it wasn’t even the fact that she had another close friend. it was the fact that for so long, me and moon had been that person for each other. then one day she told me she was struggling and that reflux had become a source of comfort for her.

and all i could think was: why not me? why wasn’t i the person she ran to anymore.

i spent months convincing myself i was overthinking, convincing myself i was being paranoid. but deep down i already knew something had changed. i saw it in the shorter conversations, the fewer calls, the way she would spend hours with reflux and then message me late at night after he had gone to sleep. the signs were everywhere. i just didn’t want to accept them, because accepting them meant accepting that i wasn’t as important to her anymore. and that realization was tearing me apart.

i tried holding on. i tried becoming closer again, bringing back what we used to have. but eventually i had to face reality. she wasn’t choosing me anymore, and no amount of effort from my side was going to change that.

so i made one of the hardest decisions i’ve ever made. i blocked her. not because i hated her, not because i wanted revenge, not because i wanted to hurt her. i blocked her because i genuinely think staying would’ve destroyed me. my mental health was already at one of the lowest points in my life. watching myself become less and less important to somebody i emotionally depended on was killing me from the inside. and if i kept going, i honestly don’t know where it would’ve led me.

for the first time, choosing myself hurt more than choosing somebody else. but i did it anyway.

and if moon ever reads this one day, i hope she understands something. she mattered to me more than she will probably ever realize.