Not every breakup involves romance. Sometimes, they can be with a person who knew all of your secrets and life experiences, someone who answered all of your late-night calls asking for last-minute sleepovers and made ordinary days feel special.
I think that friendships are even more intimate than relationships, and when one ends, the loss is almost impossible to explain. Those friends become a part of your everyday life, someone to tell the little things to, someone to turn to when something goes wrong. When the friendship ends, you lose not only the person, but the routines and experiences shared with them.Â
Personally, in the past year, I went through one of the hardest friendship breakups one could go through. They were the people I called when I got in a fight with my parents, when I wanted to go on the most random side quests or when I wanted someone to watch the really sad Spider-Man edit that I saw and sent to them two minutes before.
There was no clear end to the friendship, just a fading out. I think that on my side, there was a lot of forgiveness with hidden resentment. I couldn’t forgive them for things that they had said: little jokes here or there, or something from an old argument that stuck with me.Â
It was unfair to them. I couldn’t get myself to speak up about it. They just accumulated until it changed the way that I saw them. Hanging out with them felt like a chore, something that I had to do versus something that I got to do.
Sometimes, losing a friendship helps you recognize the person that you want to become. I feel that I came out a better person. Not because I am not friends with them anymore, but because of the things that I learned from them. I learned what type of person I wanted to be through my own actions.
I didn’t want to ditch my family to hang out with my friends. I didn’t want to go digging around in storm drains because there was nothing better to do in Overland Park, Kansas. I didn’t want to act a fool around my coworkers because I was working with my best friends.
While going through the breakup, it was hard to move on. They were all that I knew for almost 3 years. I struggled to accept the change that came with not being with them anymore. I thought that I wouldn’t find any other friends who liked me for making the dumbest jokes possible or for being the loudest person in the room.Â
Losing someone who knew you so well doesn’t erase what the relationship meant or what it taught you. Despite it being a really hard time in my life, I am glad that I went through it and came out on the other side. I am proud of the person that I am today, and if they’re reading this, thank you.
