bitches experience ONE friend group breakup and think the world's ending

i'm bitches.

From ‘Doc McStuffin's’ to ‘Alexa and Katie’ to ‘F.R.I.E.N.D.S’. Every piece of friendship themed media I consumed led me to believe that friendship was about always being there for your best friend. It’s about trusting one another and knowing nothing could break that trust. It’s about treating all your friends the same because friendship is not a popularity contest. It’s about understanding that sometimes you can also be wrong and that it might take a while before your friends accept your apology. It’s about unconditional forgiveness because even though it hurts, you know they’re probably sorry for what they did.

I carried this black and white thinking with me for 6 years of my life— for as long as I was a part of a friend group that quite literally shaped me into who I was. They influenced my every decision and I could no longer picture a future that they weren’t a part of. Soon enough I started applying the lessons I learnt from my theories on having the perfect friendship.

Surprisingly enough, I had somehow failed without even trying.

Every relationship has its ups and down but for me it felt like the downs were surpassing the ups. Every backhanded compliment and jab at how insignificant my presence in the friend group stung a little more every time I tried to brush it off as “friendly banter”. But I never failed to apologise even for the slightest mistakes out of fear of losing them because I had become dependent on their every word and opinion. I had it ingrained in my head that the perfect friendship relied on creating a false personality for them to fall in love with because at the end of the day, no one actually cares about what you have to say. I had given so much of myself away that at one point I could no longer identify where the real me started and the perfect version curated especially for them ended.

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The day my friend group split up, as dramatic as it sounds, I felt betrayed. The sheer idea that something as immaterial as what tore us apart was capable of the damage it did, simply did not sit with me.

So naturally, I tried reaching out but I couldn’t even get beyond my own feelings of hurt let alone be there to help them with theirs.

The first few weeks of coping with this was hard because I tried to ignore it and pretend that everything was okay. And even though they had no qualms in doing the same, I felt that discomfort in my own skin again. Something had permanently changed ties between us. And although both of us were to blame, as Olivia Rodrigo eloquently put it, “man, those cuts were never equal”.

A few months later, I wondered if maybe it happened for the best. I had never truly accepted it yet, but that was besides the point. What I was forced to come to terms with though, was that their perspective of me would never be the same, and neither would mine of them. Just like that, a world I had built with some of the most important people in my life came crashing down with each fragmented memory more precious than the next. A year later, here I am with my partially rebuilt world, talking about this incident as though it happened yesterday. The fact that we could’ve easily avoided all this destruction but still didn’t makes me wonder if our separation was inevitable after all.

Despite all this I still miss them so much, and I have on multiple occasions reconsidered getting over myself and forgiving them if it meant that things would go back to the way they were. But since the return of normalcy was not guaranteed I figured, getting cut once again by shards of the same old wreckage was probably not worth it.

A pretty vulnerable piece on an incident that messed me for a few solid months. Friendship breakups always suck but sometimes it helps to think of it as nature’s way of weeding out the people who aren’t good for you. At least that’s what helped me :)