A Dying Friendship
Do you know what’s really sad?
Realizing that you have to end a friendship with your best friend for their own happiness, and for your own. Looking in their eyes as they ramble while feeling like something has settled inside of you. Smiling even as realization hits that it’s time to part ways.
This isn’t over a big fight, or a romantic reason, it’s the affection you have for them pushing you to make a decision so that both of you could live in peace.
It’s the feeling of acceptance with a taste of sadness because this has been your person, for so long, and now you have to slowly push them away. You have to manipulate the situation little by little to make them believe that it was just life that got in the way. That it’s what always tends to happen with people that have known each other for years, since teenagers, that “life just happened, and you lost contact.”.
Because the sad thing is that you’ve outgrown them. That you’re ready to let them go, not only for your own health because it sucks to look back, and realize you’ve always given more to the friendship than they have. That you were more of a mother than a friend. That all the plans you’ve made together will fade away in the air, and now you’ll have to do it alone. It’s better to end it quietly then let it end in disaster. The good thing is when you know you’ll leave them in good hands, that they have good friends to keep them safe, to listen to them, that they have other best friends. Being more of a mother makes you realize that it’s going to be hard on them, that you’ve been guiding them for so long that now they’re going to have to face it all alone. That you won’t be there to see them accomplish all their dreams, to see them outgrow their insecurities.
It’s different to know that letting them go will essentially leave you alone because unlike them, you don’t have a group of friends, they’ve been your one true friend, yet it’s also freeing because now you know you’re ready to create another path where you’ll find people who truly fit your life, who understand many things that your best friend never could because both of you were the definition of opposites in every little thing. Opposite in personality, in childhoods, in mentality, etc. Everything, and now it’s time to walk different paths, and you’re the only one that knows that you can’t look back even if they try to follow. That it’s better for you both even though they’ll go on believing that you just grew apart without ever knowing that it was by choice, for their own sake.
It’s hard, but when you finally have that feeling wash over you, you’ll realize that as hard as it is, it’s also freeing, and peaceful. Because it’s time to choose yourself than always choosing them.