The death of a friendship can be the kind of death you don’t see coming.

It feels like a car accident but not in the way in which you’re actually the driver. Maybe it’s like the kind of accident where you’re wearing a blindfold, and all of the dials and dashboard insignia are in Klingon. You feel your body lift out of the seat upon impact, floating in a weightless panic you cannot control, bracing for the world to do its worst and pretending to be brave enough to survive the aftermath. Your friend has either been ejected from the car or willfully exited mid-journey without a word or notice.

We hold onto relationships because they echo back our identity and validate our story. These people hold chapters of our lives that, without them, wouldn’t seem to make sense or maybe even exist. Maybe we didn’t exist before them. Maybe the parts that did exist weren’t worth registering nor hold any value. They have a separate delusion and fantasy from reality, and we are the creators and queens of that delusion. You felt whole in a world that slices you open and takes what it needs. 

They call back to us memories of playhouses, giggles and sleepovers,  a sadness in teenage separation or first crushes, and if you’re lucky enough to have one for more than a decade, they will call back to you glimpses of your childhood. Ghosts of who you used to be. Times where you were carefree and floating as if made of cotton candy lightness, or invisible in the world except only to them. They have always seen your colors, flying in a rainbow headband. 

When that death comes, it comes with a sense of the world slipping into sepia tone. You walk a new balance between wanting to hold onto it for all of the reasons that make you you, and then letting go because you can’t hold on to that shard of glass any longer. Maybe it’s a friendship that died out because parenthood separated you, an alien planet that only other parents understood how to navigate and speak into. Or your friendship was laid to rest after their Uhaul departed for Nebraska and you planted flowers in Oregon. Maybe you serve your country, knowing that the revolving door of PCS relationships are the equivalent of an ocean mist – cooling for the moment, then gone with the breeze, leaving a chill on your flesh but nothing else.

The worst kind of death, the kind that leaves stains on your soul for others to see, is death caused by growth. When one outgrows the other and their toes cannot be contained in the patent leather any longer. The bruises and calluses, bones worn down and bleeding, allowing for only stillness and the hope to ignore it a little longer. Paralyzed by the thought of living a life without the other. We know that other shoes, brighter shoes, more-mature shoes, easy-to-wear shoes await us, but letting go feels like betrayal. The colors are shifting and the fear that the future might not hold someone who sees you the same way can motivate you to stay small just a little longer.

I no longer saw her uni-brow, Ked sneakers and black-rimmed glasses in my fifth grade classroom. I stopped picturing our heart-shaped Best Friend necklaces leaving diseased green rings around our collarbones (worn with pride because we suffered for a cause) because we took that oath so seriously. The boxes of letters we mailed back and forth decayed in the attic somewhere. The photos of us side-by-side pregnant, swollen, scared and beaming. 

Instead, I saw the years of gossip and turning the other cheek, the false steps and the damage that silence leaves. The resentment, judgement and misalignment of spouses could only be painted over spring, after spring. Storm after storm. Termites had silently moved in our playhouse, the secrets we kept from each other, the bitten lip and the gritted teeth. 

Her husband is cheating, but she will blame me if I point it out. 

I can’t believe she told them that. That was my news to share. What is loyalty anymore?

Ugh. I would never parent in that way. Those poor kids.

Why would she say that? That was so mean.

If I pretend it is ok, then eventually it will be.

If I tell her I am offended, she won’t be my friend anymore.

If we have more girls’ weekend, that will reconnect us.

If I order more drinks, that will remind me of how fun we are together.

If I was her, I would….

If I was more of…

If…

We are all little girls, holding onto little hands in line, going to the bathroom in pairs and not wanting to be alone in the world. Even our partners have to share the stage with our friendships, never getting close enough to break the Fourth Wall and fully understand us. How can you possibly know me like she does? She has been there since the beginning. Then when it ends, we find ourselves trying to make sense of it all alone in isolation, alone at the wake, our partners waiting in the parlor, the second-choice and winners of the discarded.

So how do you do it? If you are lucky, you can die the death of the departing UHaul, letting geography shift your tectonic plates. 

If you are unlucky, you will live in a small town and slowly create busyness and apathy. Pretending to be otherwise engaged, or distracted when you see her at the Target just down the aisle. And when you run into one another at the one of only two walking trails in town, or a child’s party with mutual friends, you can make small talk, like you did in the fifth grade, and keep all your precious details safe and hidden. 

Afterall, once intimacy is gone, the rigamortis can set in and decomposition is an easier feat than holding onto the chance of recovery.  Just bury the corpse and keep on moving. Keep everything light and easy, sober and platonic, simple and short-term, you can experience a rebirth and welcome new energy into your life. You can soothe your inner child, with ribbon-crowned pigtails and go to the bathroom alone. 

Reassure her that out of 7 billion people on the planet, there is surely going to be someone else to hold hands and giggle with. That she is brave enough to survive the aftermath.