Pain

When it happens, you won’t want to believe it. You’ll take their word for it when they say they’re busy, swamped at work, “just doing me.” You’ll make excuses for them, put your finger on extra loud in case they call. But you’ll still feel the change, and because you can’t rationalize it, you’ll try to ignore it.

It’s a specific kind of loneliness that hits you like a wave of nausea. When the two of you are having a beer and you realize that you have both been staring out the same window for twenty minutes, nothing to say, the opposite of a comfortable silence. When they cancel plans consistently and stall when giving you reasons. When you scroll through your contacts and stop at their name and almost call but don’t, feeling suddenly, inexplicably, abandoned and confused.

Sometimes there’s no huge fight that marks the end of a friendship. No falling out, no major disagreement. Sometimes it just falls apart for no good reason. Distance...  New relationships… Priorities... Somehow these things can become more important than your connection; they shouldn’t but they do. And as we get older we tend to downsize, prioritize. Trim the corners of our lives, keeping what’s important and discarding what isn’t. Sometimes we stop needing people in our lives and it isn’t even conscious. No one wakes up in the morning actively thinking “Hmm, I think I’ll stop being friends with so-and-so today.” It just goes out with an empty fizz, like a cigarette hitting the bottom of a Coke can.

In so many ways, losing a friend is worse than losing a lover. Lovers are transient for the most part but friends are supposed to be there for you always, or so we like to believe. Friendship is a special kind of love that’s not supposed to fade. You never expect the one person you thought you could always depend on to disappear without saying goodbye. And when they do you feel sickeningly stupid and cheated, wondering what you meant to them all along, whether you were just convenient or in the right place at the right time. You never really know for sure.

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In life, it’s a given that you will lose people. People will flow in and out like curtains through an open window, sometimes for no reason at all. But losing someone important to you will feel like a sucker punch every single time, and you’ll never see it coming. Which makes the friendships that do hold out, the ones that make it through countless breakdowns and breakthroughs and changes and years, so damn important.

Strangers X Best Friends

Do you have that one person you were once so close to -and for so long -that you are now basically nothing more than strangers with? Maybe you don’t know exactly what happened, as if things drifted slowly and although there is no “bad blood” things just don’t seem to work anymore. Strangers can become best friends just as easily as best friends can become strangers, it’s odd. But why does it happen?

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I know I have experienced this a number of times in my life and maybe you have too. We have friends that we just can never picture ourselves not having close to us. We love them, they bond and connect so well with us, they are there for you and you are there for them. Then one day, as if out of nowhere, you realize they simply aren’t a big part of your life anymore.

You don’t know whether to feel bad or feel like it’s somehow your fault. Maybe you didn’t reach out enough or maybe you did something wrong. But the truth is, if you can’t put a clear cut answer to why, it’s probably simply because paths changed and you simply didn’t connect in the same way. It’s not to say you can’t again or that you are suddenly not friends, but more so that it’s simply not a serving aspect of both of your journey’s to be that close anymore.

I believe that to be entirely okay. There is nothing wrong with having amazing people in your life one day and simply going separate directions not long after. We have to respect each other, our journey’s and where we are going. We cannot judge one another for our choices or because we feel inspired by something else. So often we can talk poorly about those who have drifted as if they didn’t “value” the friendship, but is it really about value? Is it about making something work simply because it was once there? Or is it possible that we can play roles in each others lives for periods of time and move on?

We are beings of change and we can go through changes very quickly. Who we are one day can adjust very quickly and sometimes that means we take different paths in life. This can lead you to new people and ultimately new “best friends.” What I’m trying to say is, if you ever feel guilty or bad about how things may have drifted from close friends of your past, don’t. It’s normal, it happens, it’s okay and if you like, you can communicate with those people about it.

Imagine you and your best friend (or friends from your past) like radio stations. Sometimes, you are all tuned into the same thing and vibing the same way, then, people change and the frequencies of each person change. Suddenly you’re dialed into different stations and they just don’t mesh in the same way. Instead, you now mesh with another person or group of people who are dialed into your station.

This doesn’t mean we can’t remain friends simply because we change, it simply means it happens, and when it does, it’s okay! I have many friends who I don’t see as often but can still call up and connect with very easily. I will always be grateful for those friendships no matter what, but does it mean we will always be super tight? No, and that’s cool.

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Sometimes things can drift because something happens between us. It can be big or it can be small. These are the types of “splits” where we ask ourselves: “are we simply not friends because we are unable to move past a disagreement?” Many times we can still very much be dialed into that same station with another person, yet someone peeved the other one off and no one wants to give in. This is where we can really just take advantage of a great opportunity to learn a lot about facing ourselves and communication.

This type of situation is one that is just so tough to see. We spend so much time holding grudges and holding onto toxic feelings and judgments because we can’t just make peace with what may have happened. Deep down, we all seem to want to have these people back in our lives but at some point, we simply don’t know how to make it happen anymore. Either we are too scared to be the one to call them first or we just don’t even know what to say.

If we let it go long enough, we can completely “get over” what happened, but still have no clue how to rekindle that friendship because we don’t know how it will look. Funny thing is, I’ve seen so many examples of accidental meetings in these cases where the two friends hit it off like no tomorrow. Imagine if one were to have just called the other years ago?

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Yours And Mine

Yours and Mine

I recently had this discussion with some good friends of mine. We’re all strong, fiercely independent women who never had anything handed to them in life. We’ve worked hard for what we have and have accomplished many amazing things. We have learned to do things on our own without anyone’s help, especially men. Personally, I have done it as a necessity, not as something I particularly want. Trust me, I would love a man around the house. I am very much a traditionalist when it comes to gender roles. Yes, I said it.

I believe men should be men and women should be women. I love taking care of my man and doing all the traditional women roles like cooking and cleaning and making him feel like a king. That’s just who I am. But, I also expect him to be a man who takes on that dominant protective role. I think it provides balance. Maybe some people will think the way I think is backwards and women and men should be equal and yayyy women blah blah blah. Hey I totally agree that women and men should have equal opportunities but I want a man who takes care of me physically, emotionally and mentally and I will, in turn, take care of all his needs. Is that too much to ask?