Losing a Friend

I ran into an old friend the other day. She and I had been like sisters many, many years ago.


I hadn't been in town very long when we met where we both worked. She befriended  me and we did just about everything together. We shared deepest secrets, laughed till we cried, shopped till we dropped. We even went on overnight outings with some of her other friends and had tons of fun.


She would drop over and bring Cokes, I would drop over and take Pepsi's. I thought our friendship would last forever. But, suddenly one day she was gone. She just quit calling. She just quit coming over. I was flabbergasted. What had I done wrong??  I was sad beyond words. Though I have never been divorced I think that, that must be what it feels like. I was deeply hurt by the loss.


I tried calling her but she would never return my calls. I tried stopping over, but she was never around. One time I did manage to reach her and I asked her point blank what had changed, what had happened. She laughed me off and said nothing had changed, that we were still friends. When she said this I began to question myself. Was I just imagining things had changed?  But no, I couldn't be. We had a history and we had experience being friends. I knew what she would do and she knew what I would do. We no longer went shopping every Saturday, we no longer brought each other colas and chatted and laughed and made plans. We had been so close we could almost read each others minds. No, I certainly was not imagining it.


So, I gave up.


Over time I gradually got over the loss, but never really made such a close friendship with anyone else again. I don't know if I was leery of getting hurt by someone that I trusted so much and was so open with. Nonetheless, I have seen her over the years and we chat very briefly. Sometimes I wonder how she could have hurt me so deeply, moved on and not even realized it.


I know one of my faults is that I love my friends. I always do my best for them. I try to be there for them and help them. I know there is a line where friendship can be overbearing and I know enough not to cross it.


I have found that online friends are sometimes the same too. One can befriend  you quickly and you begin to trust them, and just as suddenly as they appeared, they disappear. I think that now I have gotten more thick-skinned about losing friends. Still, I wonder why people do this to other people. It is so easy to hurt someone else because one loses interest or finds someone else to befriend that seems more appealing than yourself.


Perhaps it is human nature. Perhaps the way of the world has changed now. It is easy to disregard another by simply ignoring them and sooner or later one will just stop trying. I think it's a sad thing not to value people. I think everyone is precious and worthy of kindness in return to kindness given. I don't take friendships lightly.


I doubt that I am the only one who feels this way, and I doubt that things are ever going to change. I know for myself that I am not going to stop believing in the goodness that we all possess. Yet, I have learned to tread lightly and go forward realizing that if someone is a true friend they will remain through thick and thin. I have a friend who wrote to me recently after I shared the feeling of the loss of a friend. Their note ended, "some of us will always love you...no matter what."   It made me smile and it made me thankful for having someone care enough to  make me feel that I mattered. When we lose someone we begin to think we are not worthy, but we are. We might not be loved or liked by someone that we want to befriend us the way we'd like them to, but it does not lessen the person that we are.


Befriending someone and then losing them teaches us that we are stronger than we think we are. It is not the end of everything, it just might be the beginning of something else, when we least expect it.


Be kind to one another. Sometimes all we have to share with one another is our human kindness.