Love Thursday: Friendship

For a long time, I had a best friend. That changed five years ago, soon after she moved out of state. She stopped being my best friend. She stopped being my friend at all, really. For now anyway.

Without going into maudlin detail, we met as young teens, became "BFFs", then drifted apart a bit through high school and college, reconnecting just before I left UMass. We lived together my last semester in Amherst. She was the maid of honor at my wedding. She's my seven year old son's Godmother.

Since our relationship changed, we've exchanged a few emails a year. Some have sparked a hope in me that the friendship will rekindle. That hasn't happened, though. Smoke, no fire.

Last summer she emailed that she was moving back to Massachusetts. I asked where she was moving to but got no answer. Several months later I emailed again, asking if the move went through. No reply.

Part of me worries. Is she ok? Or fataly ill and sparing me the pain of knowing?

I've gone through the gamut of emotions surrounding this friendship since it ended, for all intents and purposes, five years ago. At first, it felt like a catastrophic loss.

Then, as I prodded her with emails over the years, trying to reconnect, I felt confused and sad. What happened? Couldn't we just talk about it? Couldn't I fix it?

That gave way to grief. My best friend broke up with me. I got dumped.

Now, I just figure, people come and go. Friendships go through stages, some hot, some cold. Take what you can get. Maybe in the future, we'll reconnect.

Still, even though I've come to an emotionally mature place about the whole thing, unseemly feelings hijack me from time to time:

- Sadness to have lost a friend, missing that connection.

- Fear that we were never as close as I thought we were, that my annoying personality traits slowly poisoned our friendship until the kindest thing she could do was back off the way she did.

- Humiliation.

- Anger because I suck at making friends, I'm lonely, and if my best friend couldn't stand me, how will anyone else?

- Embarrassment, that the friendship mattered so much to me.

Like I said, I don't let these feelings get the best of me. When they percolate to the surface, though, they make me wish I felt nothing at all.

That's how love can be.