Losing a Best Friend

Everyone knows that most friends don't stick around forever. They come and go in our lives, like waves breaking upon the shore. Most of us don't have the same friends now as we did when we were in middle school or maybe even junior high. I've had a lot of friends that have just drifted away because I followed the south wind, and they went north. Those separations occur naturally, and they don't hurt. But then there's those friends that we expect to stay around forever. We expect they'll be with us through college, marriage, kids, and even old age. And some will be. Those friends are amazing and we cherish them.

But what happens when one of those forever friends decides your friendship is over?

What do you do with the huge hole they leave?

Where are you supposed to put all the tears?

How do you go on?

Recently, one of my best friends told me she needs to take a break from our friendship because she has some problems with it. She no longer wishes to speak to me over email or texting and when we see each other in person, we will just be "chill." After breaking a two day silence, her explanation contained many hurtful statements about my shortcomings as a friend that had finally boiled over into her needing to take a break.

I have been friends with her since I was about twelve which would make it six years of friendship this year. I share everything with her from my test scores to my secret fantasies. I  talk to her from early in the morning to late at night every day. She knows me almost better than I know myself. We have our inside jokes and we can talk without words. She is usually one of the first people to hear any big news I had and usually the friend that I vent my emotions to. Now every single of those facts is past tense.

There's a empty space in my life the size of the Milky Way that no one can ever fill the way she did. I feel alone sometimes. The tears have mostly been spent, but I know there will be many moments when something will happen or someone will say something and the crack in my heart will reopen and bleed. I am at a loss for how to feel. Am I supposed to feel like a terrible friend? A terrible person? Am I supposed to take all the blame for this? Or am I supposed to believe that the split was even?

Losing one of your best friends is a wound that will take time to heal, and I think it hurts even more knowing that if we ever reconcile, our friendship can never be the same because of this. The best advice that I have for myself, and for anyone else who has gone through or is going through this, is to take time. Reach out to your other friends and let them lift you up. Grieve properly for your loss without beating yourself up about it. Reflect on who you are without that friendship and strengthen that person. And if the time comes, be willing to slowly build the friendship back up again.

~Clarissa