I remember reading somewhere that friendship breakups are so much harder than romantic breakups. And it’s so true. I still feel a little unsettled from the ending of a friendship that happened nearly 10 years ago. And I guess I’m going through it again.

Besides the huge loss of a friendship which is hard to handle just on its own, I think friendship breakups are harder because other people still in your life don’t understand it or support it in the same way as a romantic break up. There aren’t friends or family calling up after a friendship break to check in on how you’re doing or asking if you want to talk about it or watch shit telly and eat ice cream together. Friendship breakups feel lonelier, like not only do you have to go through it but you have to go through it alone.

I’ve written a bit about my best friend on this blog. She’s someone that I strongly connected with initially and just built on that connection over the last just over 10 years. We’ve been through a lot together. She held me together when I needed it, listened to me crying, laughed with me over the funny things, celebrated the wins with me.

And during that time I was there for her during breakups and a move to a different state, her marriage, the birth of her two children. I honestly thought we’d continue our friendship until we were old and grey.

But that’s not to be.

And I feel absolutely heartbroken over it. She’s fallen off the face of the world for over three months. And at first I thought it was that she was poorly, her kids were poorly, life stresses getting to be too much. But surely not for that long?

So I reached out to people in her life. Her husband, her ex boyfriend that she shares a cat with. I figured something must be wrong for her to just vanish from my life. And when one of them got back to me to say she’s fine, I spoke to her two days ago I thought … oh. It’s just me then.

And that feels like a rejection of me as a person. Of me as a friend. That kind of dismissal from me in her life makes me feel like I wasn’t important to her, that the friendship was never as strong as I thought it was.

It makes me question so many things about me, about her, about our friendship over the years. Was any of it real? Was it just me being generous with her, filling in those gaps how I wanted to see her or our relationship? I guess I’ll never know.

I wrote the above when I was still in the sadness portion of my grief. And it is grief. I’m grieving the loss of this friendship, there are still things that are happening right now and my first thought is to tell her about it. But I’m over the sadness part. Now I’m into the anger stage. And my therapist used to tell me that tapping into my anger is like tapping into the version of myself that knows I don’t deserve this pain or unfairness. My anger keeps me strong and with healthy boundaries.

And right now? My anger is saying fuck her. Fuck her and her choice to cut me out of her life. I’m a great fucking friend and it is her loss that I’m no longer part of it. I don’t want to spend anymore of my time second-guessing her decision or asking ‘what if?’ because that way lies madness. And I have no control over the thoughts and decisions of others.

All I can do from here is acknowledge the deep, deep pain I am in right now, look after myself a little more right now and throw my energy into the people and things that are worthy of my time, attention and love.

The people in my life are few but the ones I do keep around definitely mean a lot to me. I think this whole thing just goes to show that nothing is certain in life. And I’m grateful to those who do stick around.