Relationships come and go. This is a statement that everyone’s heard at least once before in their lives. Mostly, the phrase is associated with romantic relationships, as is to be expected. People date, break up, date, break up, date, get married, and hopefully last until they both pass away (even though in this country, the ratio of how many marriages don’t last to those that do is sadly equal). Relationships, however, are merely the type of connection that people have between one another. Sometimes they are defined by physical attributes, such as familial lineage, legal means, and labels. Other times, we simply use the word “relationship” to describe how we feel towards another person. For example, I happen to have a very good relationship with my mother. I love her, she loves me, she is my constant support and guide, and I don’t know where I would be without her. However, that is a relationship that, just like a romantic one, can break. Many people become estranged from their parents after a fight, or a betrayal, or some sort of event that severs that tie. Then come our friends, the relationship no one ever talks about.

Having a best friend is like having a chosen family member who you treat just as importantly as you would treat a significant other, sometimes even more-so. A best friend is someone who you would trust with your life, no matter how much you joke about how you would never. It’s someone who you care for, who you feel for, who you’re emotionally attached to because something has brought the two of you together and nothing can tear you asunder. You do everything together, and you’ve always got each other’s’ backs. Sometimes, when one of you is acting dumb, it takes the other to come up and slap you in the face to set you straight. And it’s done completely out of love. The two of you become so deeply rooted in one another’s lives that you spend months, probably years wondering what you two would do without one another. The best friend relationship is one of the most important ones to have.

Which is why the breakup is sometimes the worst.

I met my ex-best friend in sixth grade in middle school when I was living in Pennsylvania. I was an utter weirdo because I wanted to be different than everyone. When I mean weirdo, I mean, anti-mainstream, funny-dressing, scene/mall-goth kid who did whatever she wanted because she wanted to stand out. To this day, I’m not sure why the heck I acted like that, but then again, who knows why they did anything in middle school? I was bullied for it, and I usually could easily brush it off. This one girl in my English class, however, persisted on telling me every moment she saw me that I sucked, that I was weird, that I didn’t have any friends, and all the ridiculous banter than could come out of the mouth of an eleven-year-old spoiled kid. One day, I was looking like I had enough, so the girl sitting behind her tapped her on the shoulder and said, “Shut up and leave her alone”. Simple as that, the spoiled kid never bothered me again. As for the other girl, (we’ll call “Finch”), we had barely said a word to each other previously, and we had been in that class for three months before. But after I said my thanks, we just clicked. To this day, I could never understand why we clicked so well. Everything we did, we did together, and we almost developed as a part of one another’s lives.

The two of us bonded over everything regular friends bonded over and more. We were both spontaneous little nut cases who didn’t fit in with the crowd, but we found passions of our own. We were both passionate writers, and together, developed an entire universe of characters and scenarios in our heads that we would write about daily, and daily being an accurate statement. The reason my parents got an unlimited texting plan was because I kept going over the texting limit thanks to Finch and I talking all the time. That universe of characters became our main source of entertainment, and communication. Every single person we made had an identity, an identity that we memorized, and whenever we tried to explain them to anyone, we knew we would fail. It was our best secret. Of course, we did things that normal friends did. We saw movies, played video games, and we even took vacations together. We shared songs and books. Finch and I could tell one another anything. The entirety of my middle school, I owed to her. And then, things got shaky.

My life was going through a pretty ugly patch the year before I went to high school. Divorce wasn’t easy, but Finch was keeping me grounded because her parents had done the same when she was younger. I owe her, to this day, a lot of my sanity. However, my tiny family had to choose whether they were to stay in Pennsylvania, or to move back to New York. The pressure pretty much fell on me, because my mother decided around my high school decision. I ended up getting accepted into the LaGuardia Arts High School in New York, so that’s where we moved. Understandably, Finch didn’t take it well. She wasn’t mad at me, not from what I understood, but she did feel left behind. We vowed to stay best friends, even though we couldn’t see each other on a day-to-day basis anymore. We texted daily and continued to write about our oddball universe. She came to visit me over the summer, and I spent New Years’ with her because her birthday was around then. For our freshman and sophomore years, it was as if nothing had changed. I could see her and hug her, then we’d spend the week-or-so together. As junior came around, things took a sudden 180 turn.

Finch was going through some issues of her own at the time, and I understood she needed the space. I won’t talk about the details, but she went away for two weeks in order to seek help for herself. When she came back, she entered a recovery period. I did my best to give her the space she needed, but she wouldn’t talk to me at all. I saw her Instagram posts with her friends from her area, and how much she was changing. I wanted to be happy for her, and I was happy for her that her recovery seemed to be going so well. However, I couldn’t erase the feeling of being ignored. It made me paranoid day and night. I couldn’t stop thinking about my best friend; if she was okay, if I had done something wrong to her, if I could help in any way. The feeling of ignorance then turned into the feeling of rejection. My entire junior year was plagued by these constant feelings, and these weren’t ones that I could easily dismiss. I didn’t know what to do, how to stop them, or how to ignore them.

The summer before senior year of high school, we somehow managed to keep communicating. She claimed to feel terrible about ruining our friendship, and she wanted to do what she could to fix it. I agreed, and of course, put part of the blame on myself. To this day, I’m sure the degradation of our relationship wasn’t one-sided, and I would never treat her as such. So, I packed my bags and went to go visit her for a week.

In that time, I found out that she had a boyfriend, and the two of them were inseparable. I spent half my week with her at his home with his family. I didn’t mind, her then-boyfriend was wonderful to her, and his family more so. I had a wonderful time with them, and I’m friends with her now-ex to this day. But just by watching Finch interact with others, I could tell that there was something missing from the person I once knew. I understood people change over time, but there was something I wasn’t seeing, and something I couldn’t put my finger on. At the same time, Finch’s mother didn’t seem to take to me the same way anymore, so I wasn’t sure what division I had ended up causing. Being in her home was no longer comforting like it once was. I was constantly feeling like I wasn’t welcome, and that I had no place there anymore.

After my week-long visit that summer, our friendship was minimal as senior year began. We texted minimally, but it was better than junior year. Gone were the daily chats, our rantings about our lives, and even our little character universe. My anxieties about her were less and less intense, but they were persistent. I was glad when I heard she wanted to see me after the 2016 New Year. I was already in Pennsylvania visiting my dad, so she got in her car and came to get me. Those last two days were the strangest two days I’ve ever had.

We talked again like nothing had changed. We had each other’s complete attention. We went on walks, we watched great movies, we went to a diner for breakfast, and it was just the two of us again. I don’t know how that shift happened, but I thought we were going to go back to the way it was. Sadly, I was wrong.

My mom picked me up on January 3, in the afternoon. I sent Finch a text right after I got in the car. She didn’t respond at all. I let it go, thinking there was no need to say anything to one another at the given moment. But I texted her daily. Days turned into weeks, and weeks into months. And I never heard from her since I last saw her face. She never texted me back, she never answered my calls, and she stopped interacting with me on social media altogether. Everything had vanished in a puff of smoke.

The only difference was… I didn’t care. My anxiety had gone away. I no longer felt compelled to worry about her, to fear for her, or to beg for her attention. So far, we’ve gone ten months without speaking. Sometimes I saw her snapchat stories, her Instagram posts, or her strange Facebook shares. I know that Finch had definitely changed, and maybe she didn’t need me in her life anymore because the new her wasn’t compatible with me anymore. Sometimes I get curious as to how or why, but I no longer feel sad about it, or anxious, or upset. I wasn’t going to let those feelings ruin me.

Finch is out there, doing whatever she’s doing. I can’t say I agree with all of her choices, partly because I know some of them are harmful or illegal, but she took me for a strange ride in the seven years that I knew her. If there’s anything I learned from this breakup, it’s that anyone can change, no matter how well you think you know them. And friends aren’t to be taken for granted, and they aren’t to be taken at face value.