Happy New Years, world! I hope you all enjoyed some fun, beautiful celebrations of the end of 2012, and the start of 2013. I am praying that your 2013 will be incredibly blessed!
I was sick on New Year's Eve, with a bad cold that is going around, but I still enjoyed a laid back get together with some of our close friends. I was blessed to bring in the new year with them. In enjoying this time with my friends, I was reflecting a little bit on my past friendships, and how they have ended, and how some of them were easier to walk away from then others. I also realized that this is a topic everyone deals with at some point, and so I thought it may be something good to address, especially at the beginning of a New Year when we may need a fresh start and fresh perspective.
This is a little bit of my back story to help explain how I deal with friendships ending, or at least changing.
I met my first real best friend when I was in grade three. I went to a small elementary school, and this girl whom we'll call Jessie, was a grade ahead of me. She was so bubbly and I was painfully shy. Her first words to me were, "Hi, I'm Jessie. Want to come over for a sleepover?" And so began the most beautiful of friendships! I think she made me feel so confident in myself, and brought out my goofy side.
When she graduated from grade eight at our elementary school the year before I did I remember being so sad. I didn't want to be at a different school from her for the next year. I think I was also afraid of how things would change between us as she began high school.
We made a genuine effort to keep our friendship for all of that year...but by the time I began grade nine we had drifted apart. We were still friends, and still talked and she was so wonderful to look after me as I navigated the world of high school for the first time. But, as my grade nine year wore on it became obvious to both of us that our groups of friends were different, and we too were different. I think this was a beautiful lesson to learn. I don't remember really mourning our friendship because it never really ended. I still talk to her once in awhile when I run into her around home, and love her dearly. We will always share part of our past and I will always treasure that. There was no fighting or harsh words that abruptly ended our relationship, and I think that this taught me the beauty of growing up and growing out.
Sometimes we grow out of friendships. That doesn't mean we never talk to the person again, but it may mean that your friendship has changed from something intense and loyal to more of a casual type relationship. And that is 100% okay. It's important to remember that, and not feel guilty. Don't get angry at the other person or at yourself for it ending. We all change as individuals...where we are at in life, what we are doing, where we move to, what our interests are... all those things change, and it is totally natural that your friends will change to flatter that.
Throughout high school I had a couple of other friends that I got close to and later drifted away from as our interests and relationships with other people changed. Looking back, I am so thankful for all the lovely memories I have with each of them. Because they all pretty well are still people I chat with once in awhile, and are just not as close to me as they once were, I only remember the good. There was no sour ending that perverts my memory of their loyal, beautiful friendship.
More recently, after living in Alberta for a year, I lost a friend. She had been my best friend for the last three years of high school. We will call her Laura. I loved her and her family a lot, and had every intention of remaining friends with her after high school. I thought that since neither of us were going away to post-secondary right away, and although we'd live apart for a year we would reunite and carry on, happily. That was not the case.
As my year in Alberta came to a close it was fairly obvious to me that our relationship had changed. They people I was living with in Alberta had become like my family, and because of my limited contact with home (because of the busy-ness of my volunteering I would only talk to my parents at least once a week.) I told them everything I would have spoken to Laura about, had I been at home. Emails and letters, and even phone calls were not the same as sharing your heart with someone face to face. She also had begun getting closer to friends of hers from home, with whom she could also share her heart face to face.
When I got home from Alberta we made a point to see one another as soon as we both got the chance. I was hoping that we could repair the distance that I felt in my heart, but the day we met for lunch was one the most difficult days I have experienced.
She began to fill me in on things that were going on and I realized the woman that sat across from me was not the young girl who had brought me cupcakes the night before I left a year earlier. I realized also, that she knew nothing of my life and how much I had changed and grown over the past year. I also realized that our faith lives were entirely different, and having been surrounded by faithful Catholics for the past year I saw how challenging a deep friendship with someone who didn't share all my values and morals was going to be. We had both changed and grown up a lot in the year I was away, and having done so essentially without one another had created, what I saw to be, an unfillable void in our friendship. I loved her dearly, and it hurt my heart to see our friendship disappear.
In the following months we rarely spoke, and a lot more changed in my life. In the past, she would have been the first to know what I was dealing with, but I felt myself not reaching out to her. I assumed she felt the same way, as she never reached out to me. That fall when I finally did speak to her, it did not go well. She had found out my family was moving, and I think felt shafted that I hadn't informed her right away. I made a comment, after apologizing, that it was because we had drifted apart.
From her reaction, she did not see the same void in our friendship. She was offended and hurt and felt I was not willing to fix our friendship. She got quite angry at me (which I understand, and in her shoes, probably would have reacted the same way). Things ended very badly and bitterly between us. We have attempted since to get together to try and form a civil relationship, at the very least. It has never happened, and I know she blames me for that.
I'm not angry that the blame is placed on me, as I would probably do the same in her place. However, I also place blame on myself. I wish I hadn't brought up our drifting apart, and given her more time to realize it on her own. That way we could have avoided a lot of pain and bitterness. But, live and learn.
So, in light of it being the start of a New Year, I want to reassure you that it is not a bad thing to grow apart from people. I think that sometimes we think growing apart from friends is something that happens when we are younger, but I believe that the greatest changes are happening when we're in our twenties. This is the time in our lives when we are discovering our careers, falling in love, getting married, moving away, and maybe having children. All of those things have massive impacts on the people we reach to for comfort and support. Do not be afraid to let a friendship fade. Just let it do so in it's own time, and don't push people away. You want to preserve your beautiful past, and let this be a good, wholesome learning experience.
You and your friends are in my prayers this New Year!
Love,
Emily xo
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