Screw Romantics, I’m Talking Friendship Break Ups
- A Eulogy to Our Friendship
Today the acoustic version of “So My Darling” by Rachel Chinouriri finally came out. If you don’t know it, get to know. The song so vulnerably expresses love for the ones closest to you, in the case of Chinouririri, her friend. This sparked something I just can’t ignore. The love and loss of friends as you grow older.
I myself have mourned three types of friendship loses at the green age of 20.
· The first is the one caused by an act of scathing betrayal. (yes I am quite literally the most dramatic person in the world, but then again this is my truth).
· Second is the one, a blindsiding lack of effort
· And the third and last, which seems the hardest to accept, is the friendship that dies a slow death. I think this one is just as lethal as it sounds. It is drawn out and slow and usually unravels as you realise that you could possibly no longer be compatible.
I think what gets to me is that friendships are relationships that you choose to enter and they lack formalities more associated with family and romantic relations. How is it so that you wouldn’t go months without speaking to your family or partner but don’t give the same courtesy to your friends? I mean I can go months without contacting friends and I don’t even know why.
With a boyfriend, you go into it knowing there will be one of two outcomes. You know you’re either going to get married or get heartbroken which I think almost makes it easier, its predicable on some level.
But I go into every friendship thinking that this person will be the maid of honour at my wedding or the single rich aunt to my kids.
No one prepares you for heartbreak when it comes to friends. With your closest friends you never have to wonder if they’re “the one” because how could they not be. Unlike boyfriends there’s never a logical reason to think that that relationship will end. You picture going with them in all seasons of life. And maybe that’s why the relationship is able to go so deep in the first place, you’re not thinking about the odds of your relationship lasting.
According to the friendship report by 21 you have established who your friends are, because following that age you are chasing other virtues such as procreating, romantic relationships and career endeavours and land up with little to no time to give of yourself.
I’m turning 21 in two months and I can truly say I’ve met some of the people I’ll be friends with for the rest of my life, a lot of them moved to the Cape right out of high school which was hard but easier to accept because that was just one of the steps I was prepared for when leaving high school. Now that I am 20 not all my friends are the same age, they’re moving away now. Not without guilt I feel myself thinking that they’re moving someone negates or denounces our friendship. No one prepared me for this part.
I have made dearest friends with people out of high school and lost the very same from my life. Not from a lack of trying. *yes, I am salty* I have learnt so many things about myself from all these people that have come and gone and even more from the ones who stayed and love just as hard as I, the ones who I will never break up with. I can definitely say “better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all”, even though that shit still hurts like a mother trucker.
So goodbye to the ones that have come and gone, I hope the friendships you’ve made since and chose to keep are a reflection of growth and not my worth. I wont text or call but I love you forever and I am routing for you in silence.
