Life Goes On: A Story of Losing a Friend

In 12 years of school, you have a lot of friends. Some for 10+ years and others for a short period. You think you’ll be friends forever... until you drift apart.

I had a friend for 7–8 years that I thought I would have for the rest of my life. We always talked about how we wanted to live next to one another and raise our families together. Until she decided she no longer wanted that.

After graduation we started to drift apart. No more daily conversations, no more getting together, that was that. It broke my heart. The one person that I thought I would always have by my side was gone. That’s a hard pill to swallow. From this I got upset, angry and just plain confused. What had I done so wrong?

After a while I had confronted this friend and asked her what happened to our friendship. Her explanation was kind of a slap to the face. She had basically said I was self-absorbed and she was sick of it. Now in my defense, everyone can be self-absorbed at times. Though, for the most part I was a great friend in my opinion and I would do anything within reason for her. I truly just think she had found people that she thought were better and that was the easiest way to explain it.

A few months later I left for college. After I was all moved in I figured I would reach out one more time to see if I can fix what had been destroyed. It didn’t work but at least I can say I tried. After that I fully gave up on the idea. It was the closure that one may need during a break-up. Some do say that friendships hurt worse than romantic relationships when they’re broken up.

After that all was great. I had made new friends at school and still kept in touch with the loyal friends from high school that I still had. I eventually got over being upset over this one broken friendship and started focusing on making other quality ones. It took a while but I finally was able to get to that point.

During winter break, one of my best friends from home wanted to go out to eat and go skating with me and this former friend. To be completely honest, it was weird. It was as if I were meeting her for the first time. I wasn’t sure what to say or how much to say. I don’t trust her anymore to indulge more than surface knowledge. Since then, we went back to not speaking to one another. I’ve been told from sources that others have noticed that she’s changed and she actually tarnished more friendships than just ours.

The moral to this story is that life goes on after drifting apart from a friend no matter how much it hurts. People change both for the better and the worst, but they change. You’re not the same person you are over the years, so why should you expect other people to be? Also, you may just go different directions in life and have to move on to your own thing. All of this is A-okay.

If you have a similar experience, my best advice to you is to just move on. Take the experience as a learning experience. Figure out how to pick out a failing relationship and try to repair it or just let it go sooner; before it rips your heart out (it’s not fun to reach that point, trust me). Then focus on other things like school, work, etc. Friendships, like romantic relationships, will fall into place. Who knows, you may even find the best of friends in the most unexpected locations. Just keep your head up and live your life to the fullest, with or without that person.