There is no way of knowing, when you are a child, that growing up will also mean growing into perspectives. That with time, you will gather experiences, emotional boundaries, and quiet understandings that will eventually place you at crossroads with people you once loved without hesitation.
For most of us, the first true experience of love arrives not through romance, but through friendship.
The kind that teaches you companionship before it teaches you desire. The kind that feels uncomplicated and permanent.
How Friendships Shape Our First Understanding of Love
In my life, I have been fortunate to meet remarkable people across different phases and cities. But movement has always defined me. I have rarely stayed in one place long enough to grow roots (until very recently). And with movement comes change. With change comes distance. And with distance, sometimes, silent goodbyes we never consciously agree to.
Some friendships fade because life intervenes. Some end because people grow in directions that no longer align. And some end because the version of you that entered the friendship no longer exists. On occasion, I have no hesitation in acknowledging that I have also been too immature to tackle the larger picture.
But almost like your first love, moving on from a friendship is one of the hardest things that we do and not enough is spoken about it. There is no blueprint that tells you that these are five stages of grief, or that these are the things that you do to find closure, and unlike finding love again (which I would say is hard enough), finding more friends who fit into your life is harder.
Friends are the people who witness your becoming. They see you in between phases, between who you were and who you are trying to be. They hold your hand through heartbreaks and listen to your irrational fears. They make this ordinary and mundane life somehow more meaningful, and worth living.
They often know the versions of you that no one else ever will.
But we often forget, that while they might hold up a mirror for us to look at our real selves, they are not our mirrors. They will not emulate what we do, how we think, or choose the same path as us. As much as we would want them to.
The Silent Grief of Growing Apart
Recently, I was reminded of this in the most unexpected way, through a dream. It brought back a version of someone I once loved deeply, exactly as they used to be. Not shaped by time. Not altered by distance. Just preserved in memory.
I woke up heavy with emotion, surprised by how present the absence still felt.
It is a strange kind of grief to miss someone who is very much there but just not in your life. To realize that what you are mourning is not the person they are today, but the place they once held in your life. The conversations that will now never happen. The version of you that only existed in their presence. The version of you that only existed there.
Moving on does not negate the love that existed at one point. And I exist at this intersection between memory and becoming. And wherever you go, I hope that life meets you gently.
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