Losing a Friend Is the Breakup No One Warns You About

It is a cliché universally acknowledged that winter is when we do our brooding. The trees stripped of their foliage remind us how abundant they looked not long ago, while the same friends we used to go clubbing with post pictures of their one-year-olds in fluffy onesies. It is a time for contemplation, permitting ourselves the indulgence of digging up old graves.

Lately I have been thinking about an old friend. Let’s call her C. Every day after lectures, C and I would go back to my student house and hang out. It was our second year at university, and I was living with six other students. In hindsight, a wretched idea. The time C and I spent together was often the best part of my day. I was weaned on sitcoms that gave us an unrealistic idea of friendship.Shows where the template for friendship meant spending constant time together, living in symbiotic harmony only occasionally disturbed by celebrity guests and bungled dinner reservations. But when my friendship with C ended abruptly, I was bereft.

I have interrogated my break-up with C over the years, trying to pinpoint where things went wrong. There was no catastrophic argument, no perceptible jealousies or spurned advances that I was ever aware of. I simply went on Facebook one day and discovered she’d unfriended me. I tried reaching out, desperate to know why she’d suddenly ghosted me, but never received a reply.

I like to think I’m not lacking in self-awareness. I went through a major depressive episode during university, which could make me difficult to deal with. Also, we were twenty; hormones were flying like shrapnel. I’m certain I share part of the blame for why things ended, but it was the silence that hurt the most. With a romantic break-up, there are rituals. Handing back spare keys, washing the bed linen so it no longer smells familiar. But I only had a C-shaped hole, an unanswered pain which I carried with me for the next twelve years.

There is countless advice about how to cope with an ex, but very little about what to do when things don’t work out with a friend, despite the loss feeling just as—if not more—painful. Perhaps a lack of closure has something to do with it. In mine and C’s case, we still shared several mutual friends and classes. She parked her car around the corner from my house, so that I was reminded of her whenever I walked to the supermarket. I continued to see her nearly every day, but she no longer acknowledged my existence. If I smiled at her, she’d turn the other way. To this day, that pain is still skin-close.

The support systems are different when you split up with a friend. There seems to be an unspoken consensus that you must simply get over it. Even if you have known that person longer than you’ve known any romantic partner, perseverance is expected, which can often feel like dismissal. There is also little that can be done about ghosting. It prevents the ghoster from having to hear about how their own behaviour may have affected other people, and leaves the burden of recovery on the ghostee. It’s cruel and ultimately achieves very little.

In 2020, I began writing a novel about a women’s commune. The two main characters, Iris and Hazel, both botanical names, share a complicated situationship that incontrovertibly changes them. Readers regularly ask me what inspired me to write about a female-only space. There are various reasons—Roe v. Wade being rolled back, mounting violence against women and the trans community. But I wonder if I was also finding a way to interrogate female friendships in a space where the characters physically cannot leave. Iris and Hazel are forced to hash it out; they have no choice but to confront their feelings.

Today, I am more careful about setting boundaries with friends. Some people view boundaries as a barrier to intimacy, but I’ve found the opposite. By respecting one another’s boundaries, we’re able to foster mutual trust and respect. It is also a form of self-protection. My friendships are an integral part of my life, but I am also no longer afraid to explain when a friend has overstepped a boundary. In return, I expect them to do the same. In this way, we’re able to acknowledge our feelings and, most of the time, get back on track.

I do still occasionally think about C, although the accompanying pain is no longer there. She doesn’t have much of a digital footprint, which I can only assume means her mental health is better than mine. I hope she is well. I hope that if she ever thinks of me, it is with the same faraway gladness that we survived each other. I’ve come to think of our friendship as a training ground, where we learned to hurt and maim and eventually communicate with the friends who came next. Perhaps the uncertain endings of some friendships are also what make them alchemically brilliant. Even if they don’t last, they still play a part in who we become.

In a few weeks, the first snowdrops will appear. The days will gradually lengthen, and we will strip our own foliage of coats and scarves. Winter is also when we look ahead.