When A Friendship Ends

 Friendship breakups are a kind of heartbreak.

There’s no ceremony. No clear ending. No one brings you flowers or sends a sympathy card. And yet, the loss can feel as real as any other kind of grief.

I had a friend for over fifty years. We shared so much life together - clothes, dance steps, double dates, bridesmaid duties, baby news, the death of our parents.

I was there during some of her hardest moments. I sat with her through the death of her daughter. I listened through the unraveling of her marriage. I was the one she called, sometimes for hours, pouring out her pain. And I stayed. I listened. I cared.

There were times I hung up the phone feeling completely wrung out, but that’s what you do for someone you love. You show up.

Which is why the ending feels so hard to hold.

Because when trust is broken in a friendship like that, it’s not just the present that shifts. It’s the past, too. You start to look back and wonder. You try to make sense of how something that held so much could come apart.

Friendship breakups don’t always come with answers. But they do leave an empty space, and a complicated one.

Maybe part of healing is simply acknowledging that it mattered. That you gave what you could. That you showed up when it counted.

I still think about her and I truly wish her well.

I just can’t be friends with her any longer.