Heartbreak?

It's a sad realization when your best friend (and I mean we were absolutely inseparably best friends) of eleven years is… no longer your best friend. I guess I don’t really understand why this is happening. I mean, yes, I can see how things are turning out this way.

I moved away half way through our senior year of high school, voluntarily. I graduated early and got out. I started my adventure early, on the other side of the country. We were definitely a team. I was the leader and she followed me. All of the friends that I made were her friends only through me. She traveled with me during the summer time, so many of her experiences were, again, through me. We called each other out on our shit and drew lines where necessary. I was the extrovert, she the introvert. Soul mates doesn’t even come close to the bond that we had built..or so I thought we had built. I noticed change in the both of us after moving away, but the change in me and the change in her were completely unrelated, though similar in many ways. We both had to learn to fend for ourselves, to make new friends, and roll with the punches as they came. I feel like I grew, expanded, while she downgraded. She became friends with kids far younger than she, and lost a lot of the maturity that I knew she used to have. She became a child again, but not in the greatest sense. 

I moved back to Nebraska and we re-bonded after knowingly growing apart and life was good. I suppose it’s true that all good things come to an end, because as summer time came to a close, my time in Nebraska did as well. College was beginning for the both of us (mine a little later), but I moved away again and she moved too. I found a family out here and she seemed to flounder, finding temporary niches, but never really being happy with where she was fitting in. We tried keeping in touch as best we could, and managed fairly well. Before we knew it, it was Christmas time and I was back in Nebraska once again. For a short visit only. She was leaving to California only days after I had returned, so it seemed fitting that I would spend most of my time with her. That’s really all I wanted to do, you know? Just laze around with my best friend and be happy. Go through the usual routines and feel as though nothing has changed.

Turns out that while you grow up, things like that don’t come as easily as they used to. She opted out of spending quite a bit of time with me to be with people that she could see at any other point in the year. People that live very close to her. Why??

I spent my time with my other very close friend and that’s when it hit us both. She’s changing…breaking herself apart from me and from us. Unsure of the influences causing her departure, we hypothesized but came to few reasonable conclusions. And now here I am, back in Washington having not spoken to her in almost three weeks.

I don’t know how to deal with this, exactly. Do I try and talk to her about the situation at hand? Do I try and talk to her like normal? Do I just not try because she’s made no effort to get in touch? Am I supposed to walk away from the person closest to my heart after 11 years of everything you could imagine two people going through together?

Real heartbreak happens like this. Tragedy at its finest.