Thinking about friendship.

I think a lot about friendship. Ways to make time for friends, trying to hold onto old traditions that get harder and harder to keep up as we get older, knowing exactly who I can turn to in any given situation and making sure they know how much I appreciate that. The part I've always struggled with though is knowing when to walk away. Sometimes certain friendships need to end. You've grown apart or had a falling out or maybe the relationship was just toxic after a while. It sucks but it happens. I do believe in second chances though. But what if the second chance still doesn't work and no matter how much you try, you still can't open up or trust that friend the way you used to? Then what? That's been a big thing I've been dealing with this past year and I thought I could avoid having to come right out and say, we're not "best friends" anymore. Until said ex-best friend asked me to be a bridesmaid a few weeks ago and suddenly there was no avoiding it. Whoever said friend breakups are just as messy as romantic breakups wasn’t kidding.

I originally wasn't going to blog about it here and I'm not trying to air my dirty laundry. But I couldn't stop thinking about how I wanted to write about it. Writing has always been therapeutic for me and I figured, why not? I feel like this is something a lot of people my age can relate to. The older I get the more important it is to me to have friends I can really open up to and trust. Sure I have friends I can happily hang out with and I love spending time with those people. But the women I call or text when I have happy news or when I need to freak out, that list has gotten smaller and smaller and I'm okay with that. I'm at a point in my life where I know who my closest friends are. And I think part of knowing that comes from knowing myself a lot better now than I did ten years ago.

So when this person asked me to be a bridesmaid in their wedding, I knew I couldn't say yes.

The worst part is that even though I’ve known it was time to take some space from the friendship for a while, I felt such guilt over it. I know I didn’t do anything wrong but I feel like there’s a stigma (at least for me) that it’s harsh or mean to walk away from someone you have a lot of history with.

The night before, I started to think -- is being so careful of hurting her feelings the right thing to do? The kind thing to do? Honesty is the best policy for a reason, right? I think it's better to be up front about where you stand. But I'm not always good at practicing this because I'm naturally a people pleaser.

This eventual talk was one of the most awkward and most difficult conversations I had to have with someone. But I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders when I spoke to her openly. I said no but more importantly, I said that we were not going to go back to the way we used to be and instead of trying so hard to go back, maybe we should just concentrate on building a new, albeit different, friendship. I could see she was hurt but even now, I know I did the right thing.

I haven't heard from her since and something tells me I probably won't for a while. Who knows, maybe not ever. I think the biggest thing I've learned from this whole experience is even though the truth may hurt the other person, that doesn't make YOU a mean person. You have to be true to yourself especially when it comes to putting your foot down or knowing your boundaries and I think I finally get that.

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[Note: As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I missed writing openly and personally but I wasn’t sure if I should do it on this blog (I considered starting another one). But thanks to a talk with Magan, I got the extra push I needed to write what’s been on my mind. And thanks to Estelle, who read my different revisions until I got it right, I feel comfortable posting today. Except of course I am still nervous - hah! And if being this open is too scary, the posts will disappear from the blog again. But for now, I’m going to give it a shot.]