8/100: What’ve you learned from the friendships you’ve lost in adulthood?
Your biggest heartbreaks are supposed to be romantic.
You end it or they end it, then you eat takeout in bed and cry in the shower while your 1 to 4 closest friends piece you back together. TV and movies made you believe that the only person capable of ripping your heart from your ribcage, beating, begging, and bloody is a lover. The deterioration of platonic friendships was seen as far less entertaining.
Friendship where the magic of time, place, and proximity made two people inseparable. Dreams were shared, insecurities overlooked.
Moves, first jobs, firings, weddings, divorces, death. Birthday trips turned calls, turned texts, turned single sentence. Canceled calendar invites, story views, silence.
One less person to piece your memory back together, to piece you back together.
What TV and movies often leave out, with friendship, is that you’re holding each other’s hearts, beating, begging, and bloody just the same.
It’s become too easy to flatten years of friendship into sound bites that make me feel better. To tell you when they were wrong, why I was right, and how I outgrew certain people. But the more I reflect on the tiny parentheses of time we held each other, the only way we knew how, the more I realize the friends I’ve lost in adulthood have taught me just as much about myself, holding an unflinching mirror to the the finality of things, the necessity of conflict and communication, and what it even means to be a tender and true friend.
I’ve learned that eras end. Your friends will become a mosaic of time and place, circumstance and serendipity. A reflection of who you were, who you are, who you’re becoming. And as you grow and change, the areas of compatibility will expand with some and contract with others. You’ll hit different milestones, learn at different paces, shift philosophies, shed identities. Not everyone can stay, will stay. It’s perfectly normal to grieve some endings like a death, with all its souvenirs of joy and sadness, while feeling trepidation and excitement about the new friendships unfolding.
I’ve learned that conflict is inevitable. Mistakes in friendships will be made. By you, by them. But the hard conversations can still feel easy when you both make room for truth and tenderness. For an “I love you” and a “this fuckin’ bothered me.” For this, mercy and forgiveness must be foundational (and a sense of humor doesn’t hurt). I’m actively working on letting disagreements with the friends I call family build density, not distance.
I’ve learned that to have a friend, you must be a friend. And sometimes being a friend is imbalanced, inconvenient, annoying. Life will happen. Reciprocity won’t be 1 to 1. Your capacities will oscillate between bountiful and nonexistent. Can you find new ways to support and enjoy each other? Can grace and accountability coexist? Can you be there for each other when it matters?
I’ve learned that your people will find you. Trust that even after loss, there will be people you meet with whom you can be your sincerest self with. Where you can witness and be witnessed in all your multitudes. Where you both know that just by existing at the same time, you have, in fact, struck gold.
Love,
Nneka
8/100: What’ve you learned from the friendships you’ve lost in adulthood?
Thank you for watching, reading, listening. I’m so looking forward to reading your answers to this one, friends. Friendship loss is painful. I think we have a lot to learn from each other here.
I lost a friendship this summer. A misunderstanding that the other didn't want to explain or solve, the choosing of another friend over another. The lack of caring, of admitting when they were wrong, of wanting to reconcile. Of believing them to trust fall only to...fall. Hard.
It broke my heart into many pieces and I have since been healing from the hurt. Your reflection is aiding me in the healing. Thank you!
A friendship of over a decade ended this year - really, it began its descent last year (letting go isn’t easy). The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that friendship by proximity is no longer an option for me. I no longer have the capacity to hold onto commitments that aren’t. Time and a shared history alone aren’t enough to tolerate the absence of friend they once were. I’ve learned that friendships, like people, evolve, and if someone isn’t willing to grow with you, it’s okay to move on without them.