The Break-up

I went through a break-up recently. No, not my marriage. I broke up with my best friend.

It's odd really, when you are close with someone you consider a sister, someone you have traveled with, your kids are friends, you do everything together and then you are not friends any longer. It's almost like a death. You go through the same cycles of grief, the denial, sadness, anger, then the acceptance. It can be as traumatic as divorce. Someone you were extremely close to now you are avoiding and not speaking to and all forms of communication have stopped. The hard part in this is that we work together so we see each other every work day.

I still don't know what happened. I know that I have been accused of saying things that I do not recall saying. Actually, I have never been told what I supposedly said, just that I was overheard saying things. This is news to me. In the ten years we were friends I never said anything bad about her. I loved her like a sister.

At first I reached out and tried to understand, I believe there were other things going on in the undercurrent of her life which contributed to this. I apologized profusely for things that I did not what I was apologizing for. I cried daily, at home and at work. I could not understand.

When I got a response in the form of a nasty email I was stunned. Accusations and betrayals coming out of the mouth of someone I thought I knew. I weeped and cried and kept to myself. I felt literally like I had been stabbed in the back. I realized that when you share yourself so openly with another person, sometimes all you are opening yourself up for is heartache.

I became angry and thought "how dare you", I thought about things constantly, I hashed things over in my head trying to recall what could have happened and always coming up with nothing.

After a few weeks her husband called me and tried to figure out what happened. He didn't even know. We discussed at length what could have happened. He wanted to try and get us together to get some type of conversation going but I knew her and any kind of ambush would have made things worse.

As time has gone by I realize now that we will probably never be friends again. I have not talked to many people about the situation especially at work, I just don't trust that many people. The people who do know about it know the basics. I still have never said anything bad about her.

One thing I have realized now that nearly five months have gone by is that I am just as happy now as I was when we talked constantly every day. I have many, many friends. People who love me no matter what. People who would come to me and tell me "Hey, you have upset me by what you said and I want you to know why" That is all I have ever asked for, just tell me what I did so I can understand. I have noticed other things now that I am separated from the situation. Things about her that I didn't notice until we didn't talk and I have realized that maybe this was not meant to be a lifelong friendship. Maybe this has run its course.

A chapter has closed in my life and now I just need to move forward and look ahead to better times.