This is a very personal and painful topic to me and I had some doubts about writing it. However, my bio reads that I talk about the ‘‘shebang’’ that lives in my head, and I like to keep my promises.
The tv shows that give me a cozy, comforting feeling are the ones that celebrate strong female friendships. Think Sex And the City, Girls, and The Bold Type.
The reason I find this so comforting is because it almost feels like I am a part of this group of best friends. In tv shows such as mentioned above, besides the occasional quarrel, it all seems like it’s easy to have, gain, and maintain friendships like that.
Not that long ago, I lost my best friend (don’t worry she is alive). We were best friends since day one and fifteen years later, I ended it. It was one of the hardest break-ups I’ve ever been through, and trust me, I’ve had my fair share of break-ups. It was definitely not the same as breaking up with a partner, dare I say.. it was worse.
In fifteen years of friendship, mostly throughout our twenties, we dealt with relationships, break-ups, single-hot-girl-phase, and so on. We supported one another no matter what, we finished each other's sentences, and only needed a look to know what was going on. As we approached our thirties, leaving our twenties behind in lock down due to COVID-19, things drastically changed. We weren’t partying anymore, we weren’t seeing each other that often, and like everyone else, you reflect a bit more when you’re stuck in between four walls. And let me tell you what isolation does to a person. First of all, you reconsider all of the choices you made thus far, the future doesn’t seem so certain anymore, and being without a partner, hence alone, seems like a one way ticket to depression. So from this point of panic, you do not make the best decisions.
Now, I cannot judge decisions made by others.. wait I can. My best friend made a decision to be with a manipulative, controlling, narcissistic, physical abusive, psycho.
I saw my best friend dive into a relationship, head first, that was toxic and dangerous. She was head over heels and blind like a bat. He started to ask her to change her appearance, he would make her feel guilty about her past with other men, he would tell her the people around her didn’t have her best interest like he did. Yikes.
As one would think is the right thing to do, you show your concerns. I told her I was worried. I told her I was happy that she was experiencing butterflies fluttering around, but I couldn’t help but notice her changing things about herself, physically but also in her personality. Interests, values, even things she would find funny before she would now discard and tell me it’s not who she was anymore. Everything changed.
Not long after expressing my concerns, she became more and more distant. Until at one point, I received a long text message with a lot of reproach, telling me our friendship was over.
Now if you recall, I said I ended the friendship. That is because this wasn’t the end to our story, it was an intermezzo of six months. Those months broke me. I was so sad and I could not stop thinking about her, worrying. I had dreams that everything was okay again, I had nightmares of us fighting. It was on my mind constantly. How can you throw away a 10 year friendship, just for a guy you’ve met two months ago? I couldn’t wrap my head around it.
After six months and finally finding some peace and acceptance with the situation, I received a letter. She wrote an apology, saying she broke up with Mr. manipulative, and that he turned out to be, well, cray. My instant response was to go over to her place, cry buckets together and all is forgiven. But something was broken, I realized I was also f*cking pissed off. So I wrote a long letter back, with all my genuine feelings about the whole thing. I dropped it off at her mailbox. The next day I did see her in person, and we did cry buckets together. Of course I was going to be there for her after everything she had been through with that guy.
I did forgive, but unfortunately I could not forget. It was so hard to push away my feelings of distrust towards her, that one day she might drop me like a stone again. I couldn’t get passed the fear of losing her once more. In retrospect, I feel like I didn’t mention this enough to her. I feel like after we had a week of long talks about it, we kind of brushed it off with ‘That will never happen again!’ But my walls were up and it would take a lot, if at all possible, to go back to what we were before.
I tried to come back to it for another five years. It wasn’t there anymore. I still ponder over what made us grow even further apart after that incident. Was it lack of communication about how I felt? Was it not being able to fully trust her again? Or simply two people not being on the same page anymore? After five years of trying to fit into a dress I fully grown out of, I ended the friendship. It wasn’t a ‘and just like that’ moment. There is a lot more complexity to it that I cannot cover in a single post. However, it took me a long time to address my unhappiness in the friendship. I wasn’t myself around her, I left meet ups more drained than it gave me energy and we both found ourselves going into a completely different direction in life.
And to be honest with you guys, I sometimes blame myself for this friendship burning out. I don’t take the full blame but I just know that I should have had those uncomfortable conversations with her about the things I didn’t appreciate, or how I wanted to be treated. It is not far from a romantic relationship. You set boundaries, you talk about your feelings, you do not avoid conflict just to keep the peace. In the long run this builds up and slowly you will see cracks appear in a once solid rock. which will shatter in pieces over time.
Losing people is a part of life, we cannot escape this truth by any means. It can be a friend you slowly lose out of touch with, it can be a break-up with your partner, it can be by loss through death. I think it’s one of the hardest existential experiences we have to go through and it is completely okay to grieve, be angry, and to sometimes even feel relief. Essentially, to go through all the phases of loss that you will encounter.
I certainly don’t have all the answers to complex life situations. I could end here with a cringe quote about how time will heal all wounds, and something with lights and tunnels, but I probably hit the cringe limit already.
Much love,
Jasmine
Losing friends is always difficult, but people travel their own paths and it’s beautiful when two people can stay aligned for as long as you and your friend did. Hopefully, you both will look back fondly on the friendship you had and not let growing a part cast a shadow over what you had. ❤️
Beautifully written. ❤️ It’s always so much more complex than people think!