I don't know how to let my friend go
And even if I did know... I'm not so sure I really want to
I’m starving myself this week and I think it’s as punishment for letting my friend go, like losing that friendship is so unbearable I can’t even begin to face it, so instead I’m just simply not eating.
I don’t know if that makes sense?
I’m having a hard time understanding the logic behind it, myself. I just know the pain of losing this friendship is more than I know how to handle.
It’s such a horrible feeling. And one I don’t appear to have any control over.
And, I don’t know, but maybe starving myself is something I can control… and maybe that’s why I’m doing it.
I’m not going completely without food… but also… I know I’m not allowing myself to eat enough to stay alive.
Does that make me suicidal? I don’t know… It’s not like I’m trying to die. I just, don’t feel like living.
I guess this breakup is hitting me harder than I want to let on.
It just came out of nowhere, you know? Like one moment everything was fine, and then one wrong word from me, and everything came tumbling down. I could see it happening before me, and I knew as things played out, that this was the end…
But two weeks into this, I still don’t understand why it has to be the end.
I don’t understand how two people who swore we would always put our friendship first, are now throwing away one of the best relationships we’ve ever had.
We talked, like, daily. We helped each other through everything. We told each other things we’d never spoken out loud before — things that happened in our teens and twenties, things that happened when we were just kids, things that we thought would be holding us back forever… we opened up and we shared the darkest parts of our souls…
We were supposed to be friends until our very last breath…
And now we’re both just like, “Forget it. You’re obviously just problems, and I don’t have room for you in my life right now.”
I don’t know how to cope. I don’t know how to let the friendship just die.
I don’t know how to let go.
I haven’t felt this close to another person since middle school, and I don’t want things to be over between us. But I don’t know how to fix them, either.
I don’t even know if this can be fixed, or if the only thing to do is just walk away. I don’t know where to begin to try and figure it all out.
I feel like nothing I can do is ever going to take this pain away. Like it’s pointless even to try, because all that will do is just stir up all the anger, and the betrayal, and heartache, and just keep me in it when what I should be doing is letting go.
I don’t know how to handle this like an adult. (For real… I’ve been avoiding contact with others for twenty years, exactly for this reason, so… I really don’t know what to do.)
Which is why I’m refusing to eat. And why I’m staying in bed all day. And why, if I’m awake, I always have my headphones on. Because doing so gives me a whole different set of problems I can focus on, that all feel like they’re within my control, whether they really are, or not.
It’s easier to starve myself than it is to sit with all these unanswerable questions, and lie to myself and say that everything’s going to work out, when it just feels like everything I stand for is coming undone and it’s most likely all my fault for not being able to handle what otherwise should be an honest misunderstanding between friends.
I don’t know how to just tell her, “I’m sorry.” I don’t know how to tell her that her friendship is more important to me than all the pain I’m causing myself by not trying to fix things.
But I’m so angry. I’ve never felt so betrayed. I’ve never wanted somebody else to suffer like this just so they can know what I’m feeling.
I don’t know how to navigate these emotions, and so I’m literally watching my best friend fade right out of my life because I can’t just say, “Wait…”
So instead, I’m not eating. I know it’s not healthy. I know if it goes on long enough, there are health risks. I know it’s not actually making me feel any better; it’s merely covering up the real issue, the one I don’t want to deal with.
I know it won’t bring our friendship back.
But somehow, it’s like it sets up this imaginary holding pattern… where if I don’t let the friendship go, it’s not actually over… even though it’s not really here anymore…
Somehow, starving myself lets me pretend like nothing bad is happening, and like I’m going to wake up tomorrow and it will all have been a dream, and things will be fine and we’ll still be friends and we’ll talk for hours and hours just like we’ve always done.
But I don’t think that’s ever going to happen… and as an adult, at some point I have to embrace reality. I just don’t know how, and that eats me up inside.
I hate feeling like I should already know how to deal with a breakup, like it’s something I should’ve learned in my teens or early twenties, and now because I refused to ever face it back then, I’m unable to face it now.
If I just wouldn’t have given up on myself, all those years ago… maybe everything about my life today would be different. Maybe I would know how to work through this. Maybe I would know how to salvage the friendship.
Maybe I would know how to say I’m sorry, instead of just silently watching everything fall apart.
I can’t go on like this.
It hurts so much, I don’t want to deal with it all — but until I deal with it all, the pain will never go away. I just… I still can’t even believe it’s happening.
I mean… we were best friends…
We worked hard, every day, to keep our friendship healthy and strong. We both agreed that our friendship would always come first. That we would never allow anything else to come between us. And for two years that’s exactly what we did! And our friendship was able to weather every storm.
How do two people just throw that away?
How can I look myself in the mirror and believe that letting her go is the right thing to do?
How can I create a life that doesn’t include talking to her, hanging out with her, thinking about her, texting her, praying for her…
I hate living in a world where things like this happen. I’m not saying I’m ready to leave this world… just… how can we live in a society that allows things like this to happen? It’s just not fair… and it doesn’t seem right.
I’m not even hungry.
Like, no doubt, my body is craving nutrition right now.
I’ve hardly eaten anything all week.
But I’d rather deal with the pain of an empty stomach, than make myself sit down and try to sort out the pain of a broken heart. I don’t even know where to begin.
How do I move forward when doing so means losing my best friend?