It is a specific kind of loneliness that hits you like a wave of nausea. When it began to happen, I didn't want to believe it. Took her word for it when she said she would get back to me. She was busy at home and at work. I felt the change...the shift. Because I was unable to rationalize it, I tried to ignore it.
That nausea that hits...it continues to do so over and over. I scroll through my contacts and stop at their name. I almost call but don't, feeling confused and abandoned. There was no huge fight that marked the end of a friendship. No falling out. No major disagreement to my knowledge. Priorties changed. Those priorties becamse more important than our friendship.
No one wakes up in the moring thinking "hmm, I think I will stop being friends with so-and-so today." The light went out with a fizz. Just like a cigarete hitting the bottom of the ground and being stepped on.
In many ways loosing a friendship is worse than loosing a lover. Lovers come and go for the most part. Friends...friends they are supposed to be there for you. Always. Or so we like to believe. I never expected the one person I thought I could depend on to disappear without saying goodbye. To stop responding to my messages. When it didthe sickeningly stupid feeling that I had triggered the same feeling of something happening several years earlier. You trust this person. Give them your heart. Share with them some of the most intimate and intricate details of your heart. It's left me wondering what I really meant. I don't know for sure. I looked back through pictures from when we were happy and holding each other up. I don't understand what happened.
I have reached for the phone on many different occasions. Ready to attach a photo to an email, start the subject line with some sort of "Remember this...." and follow up with "I miss you....a lot!" For whatever reason I get overwhelmed by an incredible emptiness and discard the draft. Leaving the phone untouched.
So much of my heart flushed down a dirty sink.
The worst part of the entire situation....I don't know how to explain it to myself. I wonder if another friendship will end the same way. When she will leave without warning. When my heart will be crushed again. Trust broken again. I know if I bring this up with her I will get no response or a blank excuse. I don't want to explain how I feel. I can't. I want to take her by the shoulders and say "What the hell happened? Where are you? I know things are rough. They are for both of us. Where are you?" I can't do that. I just want to be able to read her like I used to be able to. And have her read me like she used to. To laugh at our kids quirkiness. And to cry at their milestones and the tough spots.
We are no longer on the same level. Letting it fuel my signficant trust and crazies will not be helpful. I find myself screaming in my head to her.... just because there is someone else in the picture doesn't mean we can't still care about each other. She's not the other women. We can still be friends. We can still visit each other when time permits. Hell I have lots of time right now. I can't scream these things. And so I try to let it go. It's not easy. This has happened before. Before texting was a way of life. When that divide happened...it was a little easier. She knew why I created that divide. It didn't make it any easier. However, protecting myself and family was what was needed. This happened before social media was involved. I've not unfriended or deleted her from the social media contacts because I still love her. I love her family. Maybe that is what is driving the craziness of the situation.
I know that in life, it's a given that people will come and go. Loss is just a part of life. Friendships will flow in and out like the long hair through an open car window. Sometimes for no reason at all. Losing someone important to you feels like a sucker punch to the gut every single time. I didn't see that punch coming. No one ever does.
Which brings me to the end....
The friendships that do hold out. The ones that regardless of miles and tough times, the ones that make it through breakthroughs and breakdowns, the ones who make it through the changes of seasons...
They are so damn important.
