Friendships: regardless of their contents or promise, they always have the capability of falling apart.
We all have a story about someone who has dissolved from our lives in one way or another. Perhaps it was a natural separation that occasionally spikes your curiosity, and it makes you wonder how that person is doing from time to time. Maybe you got subtly “ghosted” and still find yourself upset to know that you weren’t worth it enough for a simple text message to let you know that it was over. Or, if you are anything similar to me personally, your friendship breakup was an overdramatic array of events filled with confusion and far too many late-night missed phone calls.
I lost my best friend in November of 2020 because our communication was problematic and, truthfully, impossible to work through leading up to my junior year in college. In the midst of my attempts to save our relationship, I actually came to a point when I was willing to pretend nothing negative ever happened between us. I was legitimately banking on a text message that stated, “Can we just pretend nothing ever happened and go back to normal?” I know, I was a little too desperate to have sent that message. Nevertheless, my poorly devised plan wasn’t successful in any sense.
Despite my dexterous failures to keep my ex-best friend in my life, it’s been a year now, and I have to face the reality that I still miss our memories – and ultimately wish the breakup never happened in the first place. You would think that I would feel angry or even numb to the whole phenomena, but I only feel stuck as if it all happened yesterday.
The fact of the matter is that when you are lucky enough to meet someone great, they are eternal. It is only customary that the pain of losing them has a way of remaining as well.
The only saving grace that I have come to know within the past year is to surround yourself with people who make it incredibly obvious they support and love every facet of you – your humor, success, grief, sense of adventure, and even your need for validation.