Breaking Up With a Friend

Heartbreak is quite possibly one of the worst feelings in the whole world. It’s a soul-crushing, breathtaking, unfathomable weight that just sits on your chest for what feels like forever. The brunt of a romantic heartbreak is agonizing. It feels like the end of the world. Yet, I believe the impact of a platonic loss leaves a bigger scar.

Losing a friend, especially a best friend, is less of a punch in the stomach and rather more of a pickaxe that is constantly chipping away pieces of you, long after that person has left your life. I’ve had my fair shares of heartbreaks and unreciprocated love, but nothing has left quite the impression on me than a person I used to call my other half. I used to have someone in my life to whom I was literally attached at the hip to. Everyone knew us together, and to be apart from one another was strange for others to witness. Eventually, that was our downfall.

We would do everything together. We went from being friends to best friends to roommates. Not a day went by when we didn’t talk or text or laugh together. Becoming so comfortable with someone to the point where it was like we would only breathe the same air as each other is heartwarming, but it was also a raincloud on the horizon. I refused to acknowledge that we were too close. We became dependent on each other (or maybe it was just me. I guess that’s something I’ll never really know the answer to). We didn’t just become each other’s safety net, but we also became each other’s first, second, and third, choices. there were no other options.

I believe that this type of relationship could, and probably has, worked for others. But it didn’t for us. Being best friends is what killed our bond. Living in such close quarters with someone, constantly having them by your side, never really knowing life without them, is what will eventually suffocate you. It was a beautiful friendship at first until we teetered on the tight rope between friendship and co-dependency. Because we were so comfortable with each other, we would take out our anger, frustrations, and our negative emotions on each other. It caused us to build resentment for each other because we cared too much for the other person to admit that the friendship was slowly deteriorating.

Losing a best friend takes longer to accept. It’s taken me a while to come to terms with the fact that the person I used to whisper to across the room to is now just a stranger. But, despite not having her in my life for almost a year now, she’s still the first person I look for in everyone I meet. Having experienced this loss, it’s the same yet almost completely different from romantic heartbreak. It’s gradual — unlike burning yourself on a pan straight from the oven, losing a friend was a pot of water, slowly bubbling to a boil. For me, it wasn’t something I had noticed straight away. We grew distant. I tried convincing myself it was because of the fact that we weren’t roommates anymore, and we weren’t in the same city, but it just wasn’t the truth. At that time, I was ready to learn and grow, but I wasn’t ready to accept the fact that growing up meant we were growing apart.

Recently, the hardest part of the copying process has been the attempt to fill a void. When you had someone who knew you from the inside out, it’s hard to accept their disappearance from your life. It’s a guttural, desolate feeling. Only knowing a person you once shared a life with through pictures and hand-me-down stories from mutual friends is heart-wrenching. For me, I longed to fill that empty space in my life. I missed having my person to confide in. I missed unspoken jokes and sharing playlists and being the other half of someone.

But at the end of the day, it’s a hole in your life that you can’t fill. When you’re half of another person, you can never become a whole person yourself. It’s a bottomless pit, and no matter how much sand you continue to throw in it, it will never completely fill. Sometimes, there’s no reason why people grow apart. It’s all part of the life that we live. We learn and we grow and eventually, we grow apart. Grieving that loss is all a part of the process, but so is moving on. And to be completely honest, it’s not something that I’ve entirely healed from. But I believe that to have known someone and lived a part of my life with them, creating so many genuine memories is better than to have never known them at all.

- Originally published April 25, 2022