10

It’s Monday morning and you’re sitting on your couch drinking coffee because you didn’t feel well enough to go in to work this morning.

You’ll go in at noon. You won’t let yourself feel like this for longer than a few hours. You just needed to remove yourself from all people and take a break.

You just lost a best friend. No, that person didn’t die. You lost them in the way that people lose time. It was inevitable that it would go away, but still surprising when you looked up and realized it was gone. There are many reasons people lose friends. You think that those reasons often boil down to trust. You realize, suddenly, that just as people who claim to hate drama are the ones that surround themselves with it; people who claim to value honesty and despise lying are the ones who tend to lie the most.

Some friendships can survive without trust. They are the surface friendships, the ones you don’t invest much in. However, the friendships that will not survive without trust are the ones that required a bond. The ones that took your time, your emotions – you shared tears and genuine laughter. You know that you’ve always felt the need to bond with people. You find it almost easy to fall into close friendships because you enjoy sharing people’s lives.

You know that you’re going to have to stop that eventually. You’re going to have to be more picky about who you let in.

You’ve only lost a very close friend once before. It hurt like this. That friend attempted to repair the friendship, but you rejected it because you’d been hurt so badly. The trust was broken. The heart was hurt. But you moved on. It’s been years, and while you don’t enjoy that person’s company anymore, it doesn’t pain you to be around them. You’ve forgiven them. You don’t know when you did that, but it happened sometime when you weren’t paying attention. That’s how this time will go. You’ll be able to interact with this person. You’ll be able to forgive them. You really have to remember though, that this person cannot be trusted. They broke your trust every time you built it back up. Stop letting them do that. This is on you at this point, not on them. This person hasn’t changed. So, remember the wonderful times you had. Remember the times that person listened, encouraged and laughed with you. Forget the bad times. Think of them fondly, but please, don’t trust them again. Not as a close friend. You may trust them in other ways. You may trust them as colleague. You may trust them as you trust a passerby to help you open a nearby door if your hands are full.

Now, finish your coffee. Go take a shower. Go to work. You are only allowed a little time to mourn this lost friendship, and I think you’ve very nearly used it all up.