A Friendship’s Hearth Gone Dark

We all have them: the lost friends who became our enemies or strangers. Folks we think about when that 90s song plays or when we walk by the downtown Thai restaurant.

I wish I’d been prepared as a child for how friendships tend to evolve, dissolve, or explode. Some early connections are deep-rooted and resilient, while others are fragile and unlikely to survive. The most precious can emerge from a long slumber. They also can crumble, leak, break, or erupt. And sometimes, a friend simply vanishes. All depends on a delicate dance between people who occupy the same space at the same time for a spell.

In reflecting on my closest friends, I see that I’ve taken too much personally, racking my brain for how to reconstruct an outdated structure rather than moving with the tides of connection. What has been won’t always be. This truth is more palatable to my head than my heart, which two friends have broken over the years.

The first friend I met in second grade, both of us new to Top of the World Elementary School. Her name still makes my stomach drop (although it’s a gentler fall than in years past). As the only child of a busy single mom without any cousins, my young social life was my entire world. 

For many years, the friendship languished despite my best efforts. In my 20s and early 30s, I was adamantly sentimental, writing letters and sending small tokens of our closeness. An old note with colorful illustrations. A photo booth strip. An invitation to visit me in San Francisco, and later, to be my bridesmaid.

The energy each of us was putting into the relationship was out of balance, but my unreciprocated tenderness was familiar. So much of my time outside of making a basic living went to maintaining my friendships and romantic prospects. I admire (and pity) that version of myself who refused to let go. What courage to continually put myself out there while getting slapped down. Then one day, she stabbed me in the neck.

When I read her final email out loud, my therapist’s eyes widened, and she sighed, “Fuuuck”—an accidental break from her professionalism. I’d believed for so long that the friendship could regrow with my generous-enough spirit. And then, there was nothing to do but grieve, and eventually, move on.

The second time a friend broke my heart was recently, and I was much better prepared. She’d worn her pain as her identity and saw monsters everywhere. I spoke up when she mistreated me, and she let me go with apparent ease. That happens. There’s always one person more invested in a relationship—someone with more time, patience, or room in their hearts. There’s also always one friend who’s more confrontational, extroverted, selfish, successful, emotional, or any other quality. We support one another in these differences and love them anyway.

In friendship, there are no rules—only a vague notion of what a friend should be, assumptions that are unique to each individual. And even when you think you know someone, they can ice you out for reasons they’ll never share. The best we can do is to treat them with respect and make peace with what’s beyond our control. 

Those friends who broke my heart likely won’t come back around. These memories will always sting because I surrendered myself to loving them—and I’d do it all over again.

I’m wiser now, and I feel things less acutely. My vision isn’t clouded by my early self-consciousness and navel-gazing. I also have more agency over how and with whom I spend my time.

The best remedy I found for feeling shattered was to love my other friends harder. To give without expectations. To share freely what I celebrate in them. To reserve my shit-talking for the liars, rapists, thieves, and cheats who deserve it. And to always be open to new friendships, which can sprout an entire garden from a small crack in life’s road. The seeds are there if you look.