“We’ll be best friends forever, I promise.”
This statement is said by friends everywhere, especially when they’re younger, and I am definitely one of those people who claimed friendship forever with someone I thought would be there through it all. Months later, and I’m still coming to terms with the fact that this isn’t true anymore. I met my best friend when we were in preschool. Yep, preschool. And now, at the start of my second semester of college, I haven’t spoken to her in over six months. It still hurts.
I know that it takes everyone a different amount of time to get over something, and it would be shocking if I was completely over a 14 year friendship, but sometimes I wish that I was. I think part of the problem is that it doesn’t feel like it actually ended. There wasn’t a huge fight between us or even a civil discussion where we both realized we had grown apart; it had ended with a text. How modern, right?
Though we met in preschool, we went to different elementary and middle schools, but ended up at the same high school. During freshman year, I wouldn’t say we were best friends, but we were close and had almost every class together, so we sort of had to hang out together. Things started out kind of awkward, but we quickly grew closer and became inseparable. By sophomore year, we were certified best friends.
However, there were many times where I questioned how close we actually were. She was my number one best friend, but I learned a little too late that I wasn’t hers. She would prioritize her other friends over me far too often. If I ever wanted to see her, I had to be the one to make the plans and half of the time she was too busy for me. It hurt a lot, but I always let it go. Maybe it was because I still hadn’t found a solid group of friends, or because most of the friends I did have were also friends with her. Either way, I couldn’t bring myself to do something about it.
This was common throughout all of high school, but it really picked up our senior year. At this point, I was starting to branch out and find friends of my own and I finally felt like I had reached a point where I was happy and content with things. Then, quarantine hit and I was locked in my house for months. I tried to keep in touch with my friend, but she was taking longer and longer to respond and I slowly saw her start to hang out with other people; all while claiming that she missed me, but was still too busy to see me. I learned from a mutual friend that she was keeping secrets from me, and at one point she didn’t even tell me she was going to be out of town when I tried to make plans; she just didn’t respond to my text.
All of these little (and not-so-little) things were piling up, but they finally came to a head right before I left for college. It was exactly one week before I was supposed to leave and I realized that her and I hadn’t seen or really spoken to each other in over a month. She must have realized this as well because she reached out to me and tried to make plans.
Unfortunately, I was working all throughout my last week at home, but I told her I would be free over the weekend. She said “ok.” and never followed up with a plan. Cut to me, three days later, looking at an Instagram post of her on vacation out of state with another friend… yeah, that was a low point for me.
Shortly after that, she got back home late one night while I was with one of our mutual friends. I was leaving town in less than two days and knew that I would be too busy packing and spending time with family to see her the day before I left. This was our only chance to see each other. So, naturally, she texted our friend and invited her over and added me on as an afterthought when she realized I was the one driving.
Maybe it was because I had just spent the previous 30 minutes complaining about her and the situation, or because I had come to the realization that I didn’t want to deal with this anymore—or maybe it was because we were all just so tired, mentally and physically—but that night was one of the most awkward situations I have ever been in, and I’ve been in many.
The room was either filled with forced conversation, stiff laughter, or awkward silence. I used to be able to tell her anything and now I couldn’t even make small talk. This situation felt inevitable, but it still caught me off guard when it happened, and I went home that night with a feeling that it was over.
The next day, I sent her a long text, explaining all of my thoughts on the situation. I was too scared to do it in person, but I knew that I needed to let her know how I felt. I couldn’t hold onto this while I was at college, it would have caused me too much stress.
The text was over a page long, filled with my innermost thoughts and feelings: how sad I was that things ended up this way, how I was angry at her and the situation sometimes, how I could have done better at communicating my feelings, but now it felt too late. I told her that I wasn’t sure where we went from here, but whatever happened, I wanted the best for her and myself.
She left me on read.
Part of me wasn’t even surprised.
That’s it. I haven’t seen or spoken to her since. It’s a weird feeling, to have a friendship stop without any proper conclusion. It still hurts when I think about it because, despite all of this, she really was my best friend. When I look back on all of the fun times in high school, she’s there. She’s always there and I wouldn’t want to change that. I don’t regret our friendship; I think it was necessary for me to go through all of this. I’ve realized that I’m a lot stronger than I thought and I’ve found a great group of friends that have shown me that I deserve people who will look out for me all the time. It’s going to take more time for me to fully move on, but I know I’ll get there one day.