It’s been a month since the last time I lost a friend. As I previously wrote in an article a few weeks back, that friendship breakup broke me. However, now when I use the term “broke me”, I use it in a past tense. It’s been a long, emotional month. But it’s been a month full of lessons learned.
I think it is normal to feel emotional and in distress when these things happen. I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s “defensive,” but just how people process their emotions in a state of shock. Back then, I wrote a gut-wrenching piece going through my sadness and my pain that I consistently feel when losing friends. However, as normal and okay as those emotions were, this was the first time that, only one month later, I am content with what happened. I am at peace with where I am at and where our friendship no longer is. I am okay with no longer being friends.
I don’t say this out of spite or to get back at someone who hurt me; I say this because sometimes people who seem like the right people in your life just aren’t, and they never were, and it’s so easy to be clouded by the delusion they were out of the love you have for them. But just because you love someone and love being around them doesn’t mean they are meant to be in your life. There were a lot of signs that I let slide because all I wanted was to protect the friendship, when in reality, I compromised my own comfort and boundaries for someone else’s. And in this past month, I’ve been able to recognize those things without having clouded judgment and realize that this is what’s for the best. That I can still flourish and live the life that I want to live and accomplish my goals without that person. That I can still be me, still be loved, and still succeed, even if it doesn’t look the same way I had imagined or with the people I wanted with me.
When you lose a friend, especially one that was so close to you, it hurts so much. It hurts because you’re grieving someone who is still alive, just no longer in your life. Whether they deliberately did something to you, just distanced themselves, or ended the friendship because you were the one causing the pain (intentionally or not), it will always hurt to not have that person around anymore. But sometimes that pain or sadness from that loss builds you into a stronger person with an entirely different perspective on life, and that new person you become may be the best version of yourself. I know for me this time around, losing the friendship and the events that followed really helped me mature and realize that I am so much stronger without them. That I am at the best point in my life, living abroad, doing what I love, growing much closer to God and I am content with the people still in my life; this didn’t fully break me like I said it did. This proved to me that I am a woman who can swiftly pick herself back up and continue to do great things in my life, no matter what happens or who leaves. And anyone can, because truly it is okay to lose people. Those people will never define you and if they were meant to be in your life, they would be. But if they’re not, there’s always a reason and you just have to stride forward until you realize why.