I Let My Best Friend Go, But I Still Care Deeply

I could pinpoint exactly where and when everything went wrong. But then again, I know you secretly could too. I’m not here to point fingers or place blame, but rather, to tell it exactly like it is.

My longtime, old best friend, I miss you. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. Our inside jokes don’t make sense to anyone else, and my dark and twisty sense of humor can’t fully come out with anybody except you.

My phone doesn’t ring on the daily like it used to, and I cant tell you how many times I’ve dialed your number only to deny myself the act of hitting call.

And in those lapses of time, when I realize we are not now what we used to be, I miss you deeply.

We’ve both screwed up, each one of us adding our own set of failures into the friendship pool, but still managing, without fail, to pick each other up along the way. But now, you’ve withdrawn every ounce of your weight from this relationship for a man who, I can say without a shadow of a doubt, does not love you the way you deserve to be loved.

We both know I would never cross the line between friendship and family, but he is no good. My dear, he is not your family.

He is no good. He is no good. Honey, he is no freaking good.

His destruction has fractured our friendship (and many other relationships) just so he can feel better about his own insecurity and jealousy.

When will you see how small that entitled and worthless-excuse-for-a-man truly is? He’s a bloody coward trying to take on the unfitting role of an alpha male.

When will you place the fault on him — instead of everyone else — for the damage he, and he alone, caused?

I don’t recognize you anymore. I know there’s complicated layers to being involved in a relationship like this, but I wish you could see how it has changed you. How you deserve so much more.

Now, there is nothing left of the you I love to salvage or pick up…. you are out of arm’s reach. Your existence in this friendship is but grains of sand slipping through the cracks of my fingers. In silence, you hung your banner high, and the message has been received loud and clear. I can’t keep trying and trying only to be shut down. While you live half a mile down the road from where I do, teeter-tottering the value of our friendship against the weight of your own personal battles, just know that I am relinquishing you from that so-called burden. You know me almost as intimately as I know myself. It wouldn’t be fair for me to continue this half-assed friendship charade, because you know I don’t have that in me.

So even though it hurts like the hottest Hell, I’m letting you go for my own well-being and possibly bits of your own as well.

I’m letting you go because it’s painful to be in limbo with you, and I won’t spend the rest of my life waiting for you to decide whether our friendship is worth it or not. Because, as I feel I’ve shown time after time again, it’s worth it to me. But the way you up and left our decades-long relationship made me feel like an unpopular high school girl waiting for her fair-weather friend to join her at an empty table for lunch. Because of that, I’ve often had to wonder if I’ve ever been to you what you’ve been to me…. or if I treasured the value of our relationship just a little more fiercely than you ever did.

I don’t know the answer. All I know is that something has stood in our way of what’s the norm for us. And while I’ve tried to push it aside and unburden you from it’s choking hold, you resist me without fail. So, because I care for you so deeply, this is me fully letting you go.

I will always wonder what you are doing, how you are doing, and what’s next to follow in the path of your life, but I won’t be on the sidelines to publicly cheer you on anymore. I will always hope for the best, and support you in leaving an unhealthy partnership, but I can’t fix this for you. We both know this wasn’t an overnight occurrence, and it’s a difficult choice for me to make. But this is me giving you the space you deserve, because it’s high-time you unveil what’s truly important to you in this life. And it breaks me inside to say that I will not be there with you along the way.

I could go blue in the face telling you what you ought to do or what I would do in your life’s circumstances, but we both know you are not ready to listen to that. So, I’m turning away to go in my own direction. This time, without you. And I’m not too proud to say that it feels a little lonely without you by my side.

But let me be incredibly clear: though I’m training and adjusting to life without you once more, there is nothing inside me that could ever stop loving you. Only, this time, my love comes from some place far away and not meant to cross paths once more unless it’s coincidental. My far-off love for you is curious about your well-being, but it doesn’t prompt me to pick up the phone and check in … even on the days when I really want to.

I will always cheer you on through every success, and I will still pray that you make it through every failure, but my presence will have to be in spirit rather than in physical being, because I won’t wait for someone else to decide whether I’m a good enough friend to pursue any further.

We both know firsthand that life is too short. So I don’t have the time to hang out in the dredges of this bullshit friendship limbo.

So, my dear best friend, I’ve decided to let you go for my own well-being, and (for now) yours as well.

I hope you take care, and I will keep loving you from a distance.