Losing a Friendship in Your Twenties
Friendships are complicated things, and perhaps even more so once entering your twenties as dynamics naturally change. Childhood and adolescent friendships often feel free and easy, and growing up with a best friend by your side can be so comforting. But the pressure and strain that is sometimes felt in adult friendship as life gets in the way is a difficult one.
Today’s submission shares a story of sadness in lost friendship, and is one for anyone out there struggling with the ache that comes with life’s chapters closing …
“I made my friend cry last week. I stumbled over the words I wanted to say kindly to her, and they came out all wrong and tangled up, harsher than they should been said. I flapped and flustered then sat in muted silence as she told me I’d hurt her. We left the corner of the cosy pub where we’d had a leisurely Sunday dinner and things felt spoilt by my callousness. As I fumbled to pay for my food at the bar, I bumped into her, then held her hand in way of apology. We squeezed one another’s hands, then went out into the cold night and hugged properly. She forgave me, because she knew it didn’t mean to hurt her. I forgave myself, because I know I didn’t mean to hurt her too.
Things don’t always work that way with friendships, sadly. Here follows a friendship with someone else, who had meant a great deal to me.
It was about a week before last Christmas when the excruciating agony of not knowing what was happening became too much to bear. I called my best friend, whom I had recently suffered a rift with. She told me she couldn’t be friends with me anymore. A feeling of utter chaos flooded over me. I was bereft. She had meant the world to me, a comfort during our late teenage years, and a constant source of wisdom and love through ill health and bad breakups. Now I found myself having to navigate the break-up of our very own friendship.
It sounds so trivial and youthful to say you’ve fallen out with a friend, but by no means did this feel light. Crushed by her words which rapidly unravelled a friendship which spanned a decade, I was devastated. Not dissimilar to the breakdown of a romantic relationship, I thought of nothing else. Fretting and worrying about our future became the most dominant feature of my days. I was terrified at the prospect of what my life would be without this person who was so pivotal to my being. She was bright and vivacious, enchanting people with her bold laugh and animated gestures. She told stories, wonderfully funny stories. Pure sunshine in a person, that’s what I think of when I dare to think of her now.
Throughout the months that following the unfriending, I felt lost, in a way that made me feel horrendously insecure. I trod cautiously in the friendships that remained for fear of hurting people again. I craved answers, I needed something resembling closure. That is one the many upsets of a friendship eroding, you have no idea of the proper way to conduct yourself. It isn’t like an old love, where you may send a friendly update twice a year – this person has chosen to entirely displace me from her life. There are days I am so infuriated by my own feelings I want to scream. Then there are the days I’m so utterly heartbroken at what happened. How did this person I had loved for so long see things in me that I didn’t recognise in myself? There are still days when I don’t know how to sit with that. It was devastating, and I questioned my actions and words endlessly, scrutinising my own behaviours.
I text her. I wrote to her. I text her again. Eventually I got my answer.
“If you care about me as much as you say you do, leave it alone now.”
With those words, it was all over. I have never felt so defeated and flattened – how did she forget how much I adored her? Then, eventually I realised. It didn’t matter how I felt about her. It didn’t really matter how she felt about me either. We were friends for ten years. How incredible. She was a wonderful friend, and by my side through so many transitions of life. I am very grateful for that.
Losing her has shaken me. I am more cautious now; I bite my tongue and agonise over things I have said. However, the shake up has also resulted in other friendships blooming in a way I couldn’t have predicted. I do fear that life won’t be as quite as exciting without her– but it was ultimately a decision that was never mine to make.
To anyone experiencing a similar pang of loss – I hope you feel brighter given time. I hope you’ll be able to look at photos and laugh over your memories again. I hope you know people change, and you will change and adapt also.
And finally, to her. I’m sorry I let you down. I’m sorry I didn’t listen enough when you let me know what was bothering you. I’m sorry for all that I put on you. I’m sorry.
I hope you are blissfully happy, and everything worked out okay.”
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Thank you so much to Leigh for this incredibly raw and honest piece. You can find her on Instagram at @leighmckenzieeee or read more of her longer form work via her blog: www.abbotsmuse.blogspot.com.