In a rare moment of public vulnerability, Nollywood actress Lizzy Gold has opened up about the quiet pain of losing and regaining one of her closest friends.

Marking fellow star Destiny Etiko’s birthday on Thursday, Gold shared an Instagram post that doubled as a love letter and a confession. The two women, once inseparable, spent two years apart after a falling-out she says was fueled by “too many ‘them say'”

“I became lonely because I don’t make friends easily like you do,” Gold wrote. “But I missed you… sometimes I would watch the way you mingle so easily and wonder how you do it. I realized it’s your nature.”

She said the reconciliation came when Etiko saw through the rumors, even as whispers continued to swirl around them. This time, Gold vowed, no one would succeed in pulling them apart.

“When they start again, we’ll just discuss it and laugh,” she wrote. “Everyone has grown; nobody has energy to listen to gossip anymore.”

Calling Etiko a “beautiful soul” and “one of the few people that understand me,” Gold urged her friend not to let “any weapon in form of human” separate them again.