Imagine dropping a mirrorball from the hundredth floor—that’s how it feels when a friendship breaks apart.
I’ve realized that when couples break up, they often receive more sympathy compared to when friendships end, which is absurd. They hurt just as much, if not worse. We don’t talk about it enough, maybe because there are no fallout rituals to follow. We don’t eat an entire tub of ice cream while watching 10 Things I Hate About You. We don’t have a universally accepted soundtrack for this grief. And we don’t get texts from our other friends saying, “You’re better off without them,” because the truth is, we‘re not.Â
These breakups can happen in two different ways.
Both feel like a loss in different ways. One is slow burn. It has the grace of time, where even though your eyes are wide open, it feels like you missed the turning point. The other sweeps you off the floor. It’s quick, fast, and brutal.
The first one feels like sand is slowly slipping away through your fingers. There’s no point in holding on to it, but you still can’t let go. The most painful thing is that you get no closure in this. Usually, one person pulls away without explanation, and somehow, the other has to find a way to be okay with it. Those smiling eyes will start holding awkward eye contact, conversations will start feeling heavy, and texting once a day turns into once a week. This ambiguity leads to self-doubt—“Was I not enough? Or was I too much?” This uncertainty can haunt you. You replay conversations, trying to find the exact moment where it all started to unravel. But the truth is, it’s not just one instance that you can point at and know for sure that that was the reason why we fell apart. They fade, like a sunset you weren’t paying attention to until it was gone.Â
Then there’s the other kind—the dramatic fallout. The explosion. The stab in the back. It starts with a betrayal or an argument that ruins everything that the friendship was built on. Words are thrown like knives, and those silent tears are sharp enough to burn your throat. This is the kind of ending that leaves your hands trembling, because the shock has nowhere else to go. This version is loud and undeniable. It gives you something concrete to point at—That. That was the moment everything fell apart. But it always leaves some unhealed wounds that sting months later—when you remember an inside joke, when you’re watching their favourite movie, or when you watch two friends acting unhinged. Â
The irony is uncanny, how the person who wiped your tears is now the reason behind it. How the person who knew your soft spots can accidentally (or intentionally) use them against you. And yet, sometimes it’s no one’s fault. People change, mindsets change, they grow apart, end of story. Maybe the hardest part is accepting that some connections don’t last forever. People change in unpredictable ways, and by the time we notice it, it’s already unbridgeable. But this does not mean that we don’t need to deal with the grief.
Getting used to a friend’s absence is a steep curve, and it takes time. In healing, we cherish the memories without clinging to them, acknowledge the hurt without letting it harden us, and try to make space for new connections without forcing them to replicate what we lost. But until that time comes, the hurt is real. And it’s okay to feel it fully. Losing a friend may not come with a scripted grieving process, but they deserve to be mourned all the same. And in time, you begin to notice something: when a mirrorball shatters, the pieces reflect light in every direction. Maybe that’s what healing is—learning to see the light again, even in the fragments.