Lessons in impermanence

When you become an adult, you think your friendships are safe. You've finally reached the point where you are who you are and the people around you accept that and they choose you because they want you, not because you are a part of the path they are taking to become who they will become. This is it. These are them. These are my people. Never again will I have to painfully watch a friendship die. Not like when I was young.

Childhood friendship can be rough. When you are young, you are friends with whomever your parents place you next to. I lucked out that the girl I was next to as a nine-month-old in a backpack turned out to be my best friend. The rest of them — the ones from school and from day care and who lived on my street — they were just convenient. And in middle school, they were just placeholders. They sat next to me in class and cruelly made fun of the same lonely introverts and passed flirty notes with the boys and agreed that learning to smoke cigarettes was necessary and that piercing our ears with needles would define us and that we knew everything. But high school came and our interests changed; the boys we liked didn't look the same, the music we listened to was wretched in completely different ways, the parties were too insincere and the tears we shed, we shed alone. And then we moved away to college or just to explore and we made new friends. It was with them that we discovered things about ourselves and about the way life actually is. The ones that helped shape us — they stuck. They stuck even once we left our college towns and joined the world. They're the ones who still call and check in. They are the ones who can't wait to meet all the new adult friends who have joined our tribes. And together, they are all the ones who will be at our weddings and our dinner parties. And they are the ones we will never lose. Because finally, we are who we are and they have chosen us because they love us, not just because we are there.

But what about your closest friend who you lose because she married your brother and then she left him? What about the friendships that die, not because of you, but because of life? Losing a friend when you are young is tough because your self esteem is engulfed in it. You blame yourself and you obsess about what you did wrong or who you should have been instead. Losing a friend as a grown up because of what life throws at you is a whole different kind of pain.

I lost a lot when I lost her, not just her friendship. Until then, I believed that I was safe. That my life was heading in a direction that I had complete control of. I was learning to trust in others and the world. And then it blew up in my face. I had this part of my life planned out and in an instant it disappeared. I guess life was getting too comfortable and so for many months after it fell apart, I was angry and terrified of the world that I thought I had control of.

It's probably a good thing for me. I struggle to depend on myself for happiness and not on others. This lesson was good even though it tore me up. I cannot expect the people or the events in my life to go as planned. It's naive and it's detrimental to my heart. Frankly, it is foolish. I will continue to put love and faith in my friends. But my guard was so completely down, I didn't know how bad it would hurt. I have been lucky to have had very little loss in my life. I learned this year that when it hits you, it hits you hard. But despite every instinct, you can't let it swallow you. The hole she left in my heart now has so much more capacity to be filled; in the seven years I knew her, I was learning so much about myself and about my desires. I will fill it with the love of all my other friends and with the joy I find around me. But I know myself. My steadfast nostalgia will always keep a part of it empty for her.