how to lose friends and be ok with it
losing a friend is a different kind of heartbreak - how do we make sense of it?
Angels, as a gift to you, while we’re off over the holidays I wanted to un-paywall some of my favourite editions of Bel’s weekend newsletter.
If you love Bel’s words as much as I do and want to enjoy it weekly next year, please consider becoming a SYSCA supporter, and PREORDER OUR BOOK 𓆩♡𓆪
I’ve lost friends in two different ways, both of which have broken my heart and taken a long time to make sense of:
1) Life changing, them changing, your friendship changing
When I was 23, I moved overseas and started my five-year stint of a nomadic life, and my university best friend left for London at the same time. We’d just published my poetry book together (she’d designed it), and, after a celebratory trip around Cambodia being basic and absolutely loving it, we had a dramatic weepy farewell in a hotel lobby somewhere in Bangkok, promising we’d talk every day.
We didn’t. And very quickly, I realised the role I’d had in her life had been overtaken with a new city, a new life, and eventually a new love, and it caused a kind of angst I don’t know was really fair of me to feel, or that I just wrestled with for a long time. Honestly? It was kind of like heartbreak. Why don’t they want me the same way I do? Why can’t I fit into their life? After months and months of trying to make it what it was except over WhatsApp, I realised I had to let it go. It was a grief I hadn’t experienced before outside of death itself
Things change. People hurt each other. We all want different things. You can never know for sure your life will be running in complete parallel with someone else. The more you hold onto a perfect vision, the more disappointed you’ll be. Enjoy the collisions you have with people when you do. And know the best ones will endure the same way they talk about great love in the movies, and you’ll find yourself swimming in the sea in your underwear and greasy hair with them years later, knowing they have a piece of your heart no romantic endeavour ever could.
2) Death
I had this crazy year once where two friends died in tragic accidents within six months of each other. They were both devastating sharp shocks and I have this vivid memory of walking around my uni campus afterwards not knowing how to feel properly lucky about my life, make sense of what had happened and understand how to go on.
Tragedy and grief are such a confronting, hellish ache, and that particular time of my life is a blur of sitting in cheap lipstick and baggy oversized cardigans on various friends’ couches, listening to The XX and making pots of tea to pour gin into, growing up faster than we thought.
Oddly, or maybe not so much now I think about it in hindsight, but out of that pain and shock of a year, I vowed to myself to try and live a life these friends were robbed of. To be as unafraid as possible about audacious dreams, or yearnings, or life’s romanticisms, or what felt hard but great, because here were two incredible women who weren’t able to ever do that. Whenever things get complicated or heavy, I think of them, and of this gift of a quest they left us: go on without me. Do everything I never got to. Take nothing for granted.
One final thought on all of this
I read somewhere recently a line I can’t stop thinking about, which is that the best friendships change you.
Don’t you think that’s true? Last night on the wharf, sitting cross-legged with four of my best friends whom I’ve known for all of my twenties, under the warm sky and the lights moving in the wind clutching our cans of RTDs and laughing at each other, I thought I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you.
The regrets we’ve nursed each other through. The flats we’ve helped each other move out of. The jeans we’ve loaned. The hours of shitty TV we’ve watched. The mornings spent on each others’ floors drinking coffee and reading horoscopes. The flowers sent to each others’ offices. The birthdays. The dates. The dinners. The screening of each others’ partners. The way, the closest of us even replace the role of family members in our lives. It felt beautiful and flawed and real, and I felt lucky; however fleeting or long friendships last that they can change your life entirely.
If you love Bel’s words as much as I do and want to enjoy it weekly next year, please consider becoming a SYSCA supporter, and PREORDER OUR BOOK 𓆩♡𓆪
i lost a friend unexpectedly to unknown medical issues right before the holidays - reading this was reassuring and validating of my experience the past month 💝
Okay this made me cry! Beautifully written and soo soo true