To whoever needs this, I guess

It’s okay to fall apart over a broken friendship. You’ll be okay.

I wrote this about six months ago but never published it because it felt too close to my heart but I do think it is important that these thoughts are out here for whoever needs them

Trigger warnings: self harm, suicide

It’s been over a year. I can’t tell you exactly how many months, because I’ve stopped counting.

Originally, I’d have been able to tell you how many days. How many months. I could have told you exactly what happened at the club and how I felt. I could have pointed fingers and then wallowed in self blame with ridiculous accuracy.

But now? God help me, I don’t even remember why I fell apart the way I did. I remember the facts, I know what I did, but emotionally, I can’t quite grasp how I got where I did.

And even though it hurts to think about the person I was, the person I failed to be, I can think about it.

This is something I couldn’t do for months. For over a year.

For over a year, it was so difficult for me that I was dissociating in clubs and lying (see: sobbing) on public pavements in the dead of the night. I couldn’t drink properly, couldn’t go out. I spent so many nights thinking of her, retracing my footsteps, writing apology letters and then tearing them up.

I couldn’t form proper friendships because I thought every friendship would be exactly like the one I’d lost. I thought it wasn’t worth talking about, thought I was being ridiculous for losing my mind over a friendship that had soured (because of me). I was convinced that this kind of breakdown, this kind of loss of my entire being and sense of self, was the kind of breakdown that should happen with a breakup. Not a tricky friendship.

Hollywood glamourises romance. Tells you it’s alright to watch your self worth evaporate when your boyfriend walks away, when your girlfriend or partner tells you they don’t see you that way anymore.

I guess I felt ashamed for getting so lost over a friendship. I don’t think I ever had romantic feelings for her, I know I never saw her in my fantasies. God knows I stuck my neck out to stop boys from masturbating to her (she would never have asked me to do this) and that I kissed her once in a club, but the feelings stopped at wanting her to be safe when she picked up the phone sounding a little tipsy.

I would have done everything for her, and maybe she didn’t know it. Maybe she did, and maybe she also knew I was volatile. I had a new sister. I was adjusting badly to the sudden responsibilities of having a secondhand child. Exam stress, and university stress, and learning to take care of a baby stress. Coming out to my Christian family. Looking back, perhaps it wasn’t that hard. Maybe it wasn’t that big of a deal. But at that point, it was everything, and I personally hadn’t invested enough into other friendships. She was my sole shoulder to cry on. My only late night call.

I needed her so badly, I don’t think I realised that maybe it was too much to put on one person. I reread my diary recently. I wrote that I wondered if there was something she wanted me to ask, wanted me to be there for her about, that I just couldn’t pick up on.

I wanted to be able to read her the way she could me.

And I guess this could come off as gratuitous and I guess she might never read this the same way she will never read the hundreds of letters I wrote her and never sent (or the one that I did write, and did send).

I’m not trying to throw shade.

I guess I just want to say that it’s okay to feel completely not okay after a friendship falls apart. Believe me, I was there. Believe me, I watched my first year of university crumble because I couldn’t stop thinking about her. Believe me, I couldn’t focus on my degree or my home or my friends because of it.

You’re not alone.

There was always a chance I wouldn’t be here right now, writing this. That day I tried to walk into traffic? Those times I went for days without proper food? The little cuts on palms and stomachs and legs and faces?

So many things keep us from looking for help, I guess. I know I never really did. I know I still haven’t, and maybe it’s hypocritical of me to be writing this now from my void deck with sweat on my back and in my shoes.

But listen to me. Please don’t fuck yourself up over a friendship. Please don’t spend months single-handedly tearing your self-esteem to little shreds. Let go of the bitterness; it is not their fault and it is not yours.

You’re okay. And you will keep getting better. And I know it doesn’t seem like that right now, and I know it seems like nothing is ever going to work out, and I know they’ve left a hole in your heart that you can’t quite understand. You’ll write poetry and songs and get angry and sad and maybe you’ll think things you shouldn’t. But I promise you things change for a reason even when they’re painful and unintelligible and wrong. And I promise you that if you hold on, if you don’t treat every “I’ll move on” as the last one you’ll ever say, if you hang on to the small things that are still going okay, that are still going right, one day you’ll wake up and you’ll go back to the place they hurt you, you’ll read something that they said before, you’ll smell something that reminds you of them, and your first thought won’t be “oh god”. Your first thought will be “cool lights” or “was that from a song?” or “I can’t imagine using that as deodorant” and maybe later in the night it’ll hit you, and you’ll need to step aside to collect yourself and remember that you have, indeed, moved on, but you will move on. You will get there. And maybe no one is telling you that now, and maybe everyone is, and maybe you think you’ll always be holding on to them.

But if I am anything to go by, then you will let go. You will be alright. Breathe.