This is honestly the hardest post I've written on my blog, and it's one that I've intended to write for months. I guess I kept putting it off because I hoped that I wouldn't have to write this, that I wouldn't have to find a way to express the pain and sadness that I had been feeling, and that I had been bottling up for so long, because there was simply no way that I could communicate with a friend - once a best friend, how I felt.
The truth of life is that friends sadly come and go. We've all had that friendship in school where three is too big a crowd, and you've always been the one to be let go to find another partner in a class project (this was the bane of my life back in primary school!) We've all had that one friend who fell for the rumour mill and believed it when the cool kids would say you had been bad mouthing them behind their back, and we've all fallen out with friends and taken it too far. I've lost friends because of my anxiety and others for no reason at all.
In this post, I'm going to talk you through three of the worst friendship break-ups I've ever experienced - the three friendship break-ups that have cut the deepest, and the three that are hard to forget.
1) I need to start with the one that was entirely my own fault. I'm finally able to admit that I was naive and stupid, and that I was unable to shrug something so inconsequential off, that I was unable to see the bigger picture. I remember being so excited about starting Uni but equally terrified of the distance this would put between me and my friends. We all attended different universities. When one of my closest school friends asked me to visit her one weekend in another town, I jumped at the chance. I was looking forward to spending the weekend with her, and with my other really close friend who was attending a neighbouring university in the same town as this other friend.
We made so many plans for that weekend. I was to stay at friend A's student flat the first night, and then with friend B on the second night. We had been chilling watching a movie when Friend A's flatmate knocked on her door and asked her to go out clubbing with her that night. She was quite persistent. Now there was no invitation extended to me or my other friend (at least not that I can remember), and this flatmate happened to be Friend A's closest uni friend. However, Friend A had been quite upset a number of times in that first year of uni due to various issues in their friendship, and just as settling into university and making friends didn't come quite so easily at the beginning for me, I should have appreciated that the same could be said for my friend. So of course, she asked me if it was okay that I spend the first night at Friend B's instead, knowing that I was tired and I have always really hated clubbing. Instead of being rational about the situation, and accepting that we were simply swapping nights, I lashed out. I was infuriated. I didn't understand that this was an opportunity for her to settle in further with her flatmates, to ease her own anxieties from being away from home. I didn't get why she wanted to please this person who she had been crying over days before. But then friendships have ebbs and flows, and ups and downs. I know that now. It was just one night. And I made her feel terrible. We were okay after that, but honestly, who would want to be besties with my unreasonable butt for that long?! In the last 5 years, we've met up occasionally but our friendship has never been the same, and I know I'm to blame. I will always wish this friend well though. I always think of her as one of the nicest people I've ever known or been close with, and it was silly to blow everything out of proportion just because she didn't want to say no to going out. I was such an idiot!
2) Way back before my mum moved us out of Central London and into the Suffolk Countryside when I was 12 and just at the beginning of year 8, I had become super close to two girls at my London high school. Everyone knows that the beginning of secondary school can be a really daunting experience, but I found myself fortunate to become friends with these girls really quick. We spent almost every waking moment outside of school together on top of our time in class. So when my mum broke the news that we were moving to Suffolk, I might have been a teeny bit miffed with her, especially because I found it pretty hard to adjust to life at a different secondary school for at least a year or so. I'm pretty sure I refused to talk to her for the first few months!! But Mum assured me that we could still visit each other and it wouldn't change our friendship. It might not have changed things at the beginning but eventually it did.
To this day, this friendship break-up baffles me. My friends came to visit me in Suffolk a couple of times. But then completely out of the blue, things turned rather nasty. Our friendship went from several declarations of 'I miss you' a day, to nasty name-calling. They simply decided that they didn't want to be friends with me anymore, they wanted to swear at me and insult me instead. Sticks and stones surely would have been less hurtful than some of the words that were used. Needless to say, the nasty words stopped. I blocked the girls from being able to contact me and moved on. I still don't really know why it happened, I can only assume that we were all just stupid kids, and that it was simply a case of girls deciding to be mean for the sake of it. I have since bumped into one of the girls at Uni, as she became a student there at the same time as me, and I'm glad to say we were absolutely fine. I'll never call them friends again but know that growing up has probably helped this one resolve itself.
3) Friendship break-up 3 is probably the worst one. It's the one that led me to writing this in the first place, and it's the most recent. It simply goes ignored, and there has been no resolve other than to accept that perhaps we are now just two very different people. I think getting over a lost friendship as an adult is so much harder when that friend just phases you out of their life, pretends you no longer exist, and you have to see your replacement plastered all over their social media channels, knowing that it used to be you, and asking yourself - why wasn't I invited? Why have they given up on me? Why is it, that at a time when I'm meant to be at my happiest (and I am, because I'm planning a wedding to the love of my life), do I still think about what went wrong with my friendship and imagine what wedding planning might have been like had one of my best friends remained by my side? And I simply don't know why. As a bride to be, I can't help but love the thought of attending wedding fairs and dress fittings with my bridesmaids, and having my best girls arrange a hen party. I thought that my engagement would excite all of my friends - that we could catch up and reminisce and start planning together, that they would want to have some small part to play in all of this, or at the very least - want to even see me.
But the one friend who I thought up until a few months ago was a solid 100% bridesmaid certainty, hasn't even attempted to meet up with me. For a few months now, I have felt like we were beginning to grow apart. I know that it's partly my fault, and things may have started to sour when I went away to University and my anxiety kicked in big-time. There has been a lot going on. My nan was hospitalised towards the end of last year, and we almost lost her. I had just started work, and moved away from home. All efforts to socialise had pretty much gone out of the window on my part, but then so did the messages asking me if I was okay, or if I wanted to meet up. I sent messages time and time again, but all were ignored or excuses made. I didn't want our friendship to end, because I treasured the memories of better times so much that she was one of the first people I text when Daryl proposed, thinking that maybe we would see each other as soon as I got home and everything would return to normal. But they didn't, and there is only so much time you can give someone who doesn't want to give you any in return, before you have to assess the situation and be honest with yourself. Maybe it's over. Maybe things just aren't the same anymore. And maybe there just isn't any reason other than that. I really let this get to me at the beginning of my engagement, and I know I shouldn't have, but I simply couldn't help it. I was devastated. It hurt. But I can't keep giving and giving anymore. I guess it doesn't help that I now no longer feel able to pick up the phone and just tell this person how i feel. I can't ask them what I did wrong. Maybe I did do something wrong? But I can't find the path to making amends, and that sucks.
Ultimately, friendship break-ups are really hard. Some might think that the break-up of a romantic relationship might be worse, but friends are often the ones who help you pick up the pieces if that happens. They're the ones you rely on, the ones you'll message when your partner is on the xbox or playing football and you would rather be watching a chick-flick with their company in some kind of drunken stupor. They're the ones you'll reminisce about old times with. At times, it's been made harder by how close my fiancee's friendship group has remained since school and listening to their stories about what they used to get up to. As much as I love that insight, I miss having that same thing with some of my old school
friends. In the end though, friendship break-ups teach you a few things about life, about yourself, and what it means to be a friend, and the memories, no matter how painful, remain precious.
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