How To Lose A Best Friend

Losing a best friend is a sharp pain in your stomach, the knife that almost slits your neck. She was the one I could talk to, the one who understood my qualms, my inconstancies, my quirks, and my beauty. She was the one who I wanted to grow old with. We talked about how we’d drink Long Island Ice teas on the porch where we would retire.

After 6 years of friendship, you think we would still hang on. Grasping onto what hope we had left for each other. Hoping that besides all the fights, arguments about menu options, and boys, we would still be friends.

Wrong.

She called me a spoiled brat.

I called her selfish.

She told me not to throw my grandfather’s death in her face.

I told her to stop being the victim.

When you live with one another, it’s completely different. Bills, Rent, Attitudes build up. Her shitty boyfriend.

Perhaps I am not the one who is the victim here. Perhaps I am. I wanted the best for her, and hopefully she wanted the same for me.

But now that hope has fallen apart. Both of us are different. We aren’t the same people we were when we met. Maybe it’s because I’m single, and doing my thing while she is preparing for a family.

I only wanted the best for her. I wanted her to exceed in everything she does. It’s the small glimmer of hope that got demolished. It’s sad, but in that loss, I recognized something in myself. No one should settle. Ever.

Perhaps that is why I’m so disappointed. I wanted so much for her, but her snark and sarcasm made it so abundantly clear that I didn’t belong in her new life. That I don’t belong. She could slap me, tell me I’m spoiled and selfish, and that she has been wanting to do that for the past year, but what hurts most is that we’ve grown apart.

That is an ache that stings.

I recall the rent that I paid for her, how I helped her move out of our shitty apartment in South Philly. How I was the shoulder she cried on. And all she can say is that I was her emotional punching bag. I didn’t mean for this to happen. It was perhaps the moon. Maybe Mercury was in retrograde. Maybe it was an eclipse. Maybe it was me. Her. Us.

All I wanted was for her not to end up miserable.

I wonder if this was even a friendship at all.