Sama Farrag “Grief is love with nowhere to go” doesn’t really apply when you’ve had the address memorized since the 4th grade. People come and go, and that is an unfortunate fact of life, but what happens when that fact becomes a little too unfortunate? I recently went through my list of bridesmaids, (albeit I am not even engaged yet) and had to omit 3 names. Three girls and three friendships and three lifetimes, all backspaced within a span of three seconds. I think what caught me off guard the most was how unceremonious it all was. We didn’t fight, we didn’t scream and there was no grand betrayal. Just a lecture from my mom about how “ana makontesh bartahlaha mel awel”, a group chat that’s been dead since 2024, and a slew of inside jokes I can’t make anymore.
I’m no stranger to heartbreak, and everybody knows the perfect remedy is a tearful viewing of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” to add salt to the wound, a jar of nutella to mend the soul, and a shameful amount of Taylor Swift for good measure. A few weeks pass and then I’m over it. But friendship breakups have no such protocol. There is no universally accepted mourning period, no Taylor Swift jams for the girl who used to know you like the back of her hand, and, most importantly, no moment where you can confidently say, “okay khalas, I’m over it now.” Because what do you even call it when nobody actually ends anything? Could we be on a break?
You stop texting. You stop making plans. You see her name on TikTok or Twitter and realize you haven’t spoken in eight months and 23 days. You think about reaching out, but then you remember the last time you did, she never picked up. You get a Snapchat flashback of the both of you from five years ago eating pancakes your mom made for breakfast, and suddenly you have an aversion to pancakes. Eventually, she becomes someone who now only exists in the past tense. Which is an especially cruel way for a person to leave your life, because they haven’t really left it at all.
I expect heartbreak and disappointment from romantic affairs. People fall out of love, they change, they grow apart, they build resentment and the list goes on. Friendships, on the other hand, come bearing The Gift of Eternal Joy. Your friends love you purely and unconditionally. They hold you when you cry and laugh at the same jokes you’ve been making for years. There’s no judgement and no cruelty. You go to bed knowing that someone has your back, no matter what. Best friends forever, right? Right…? The girl who is supposed to be standing next to you on your wedding day and knows exactly what happened at that one party in 2019 and practically lived at your house in 2022 is definitely not the girl you expect to have to remove from the bridesmaid list. But life sucks sometimes, and she never even gets an invitation. And unlike a boyfriend, she has seen you through the versions of yourself that no longer exist. She knew me when I had bangs and when I was still a bit chubbier. She knew me before I wore nicer clothes and before I knew how to do my make-up. She taught me how to do it. Before graduating and getting a job and a boyfriend she knows nothing about. She has witnessed your every version in real time. She functions as a time capsule containing an entire decade of your life. So when the friendship ends, you end up losing different versions of yourself by default.
You’re left carrying this bizarre nostalgia all by yourself. You hit a career milestone, get your heart broken, or witness something completely absurd on the street that you just know she would find hilarious, and your thumb instinctively hovers over her contact card before reality crashes back in. Oops. We don’t do that anymore. You can’t even comfortably complain about it over coffee, because society has no frame of reference for this specific brand of mourning. Tell people you’re devastated over an ex from two years ago, and they’ll buy you a shot and let you vent for hours. Tell them you’re heartbroken because a girl you haven’t spoken to since 2024 didn’t like your most recent TikTok, and you sound like a lunatic.
So you adapt. You learn to live with the ghost. You stop getting triggered by the sight of cheap box dye at the pharmacy or the specific smell of the perfume you both overused in college. You accept that some chapters of your life don’t end with a grand, cinematic The End. I kind of wish they did though. I’d much rather have had a big fight or a screaming match or something solid to latch on to that can explain why we don’t speak anymore. How can you still love someone so unconditionally, yet not have anywhere to put that love anymore?
I miss them most of the time. Maybe I always will. I’ll always have a soft spot for them, no matter how hard I try to convince myself that I don’t care. I’ll always know that the dates March 17th and August 7th and March 29th are special days. I’ll keep our pictures and our memories and our inside jokes, holding them near and dear because we were girls together. At some point, it was us against the world and we were untouchable. I can never erase a lifetime.
Treasure the versions of you she has saved and the versions of her you have saved. She may no longer be standing beside you in a matching silk robe on your wedding morning, and she might never know the man you end up marrying or the career you end up building. But somewhere in the universe far, far away, in a time capsule buried beneath The Smiths, bad haircuts, and warm pancakes, you two are still eighteen, laughing until your ribs ache, blissfully unaware that eighteen does not last forever.
