I had a best friend, prominent word being had. One of those friends you have from a young age and would never have thought twice about them not being there for you. But eventually, you both drift and you have to face the truth that they’re not a part of your life anymore.

At first you make up excuses for them, telling yourself that next time you’ll make up for that missed day out. You lie to yourself that they genuinely are just busy with work and family life and find yourself still referring to them as your ‘best friend’ even though you haven’t spoken a word to them or seen them in over three years.

You encounter so many people who you refer to as ‘friends’; I like to call them acquaintances. They don’t make much of an impact on your life and you don’t think twice about losing contact with them. But best friends are different. They’re meant to be there for life. BFFL’s right? They’re meant to be that constant in your life and no matter what are always there for you.

Guard rail along the east sidewalk of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California. A permanent marker inscription reads “Best friends forever ?”.

Losing a friend can be so much worse than losing a lover. For some reason though, losing a best friend of 20 or so years doesn’t seem as tragic as that two-year relationship with your boyfriend ending. It’s all kind of swept under a rug; there are no real instructions on how to deal with it. Yes, you can have a cry to your mum or vent to somebody else around you, but for some reason its not looked upon as a huge loss and eventually it’s forgotten about.

I met my best friend when I was four and had just moved to a new primary school. Let’s give her the name Sam, for the sake of the article. I can’t say I remember the exact day that I met Sam and from what I’ve been told it wasn’t exactly love at first sight. But, we got past that. Growing up, we were inseparable. As cringe as it may sound, I guess you could say she was the sister I never had. We were complete polar opposites, she was into clothes and makeup and I was more ‘one of the boys’, but that’s what made our friendship so special. We attended different high schools and still managed to see each other at least every other day. I moved to Australia when I was 15 and we STILL kept in touch.

When I was 20 I decided to move back to England, with one of my main reasons being to be closer to Sam. The first few weeks I was back was as if I had never been away, we would sit and laugh about all the fun things we did when we were younger. But, after a while I found us sitting with nothing to talk about, it was then I realized we had grown into different people. Eventually our friendship started to fizzle out, like a sparkler on bonfire night. I haven’t seen Sam since the night of my 21^st birthday. I’m now 23.

Sometimes friendships don’t end because of a big argument. Mine definitely didn’t. You just simply drift apart. It’s not as if people wake up one day and think, ‘I don’t think I want to be friends with * insert name here * anymore.” Other things happen in people’s lives, like new commitments and relationships and somehow these things become more important than your friendship. You wish they didn’t, but they do.

You do sometimes find yourself asking, “What did I do wrong?”, “Why aren’t they trying to keep me in their life?”, “Am I not good enough anymore?”. In some ways your feel personally attacked and wonder why someone who was such a big part of your life doesn’t want you around them anymore. You can sit and blame the other person and feel sorry for yourself as much as you want but in the end it wont get you anywhere. Losing a best friend is hard but accepting it is harder. But it’s not the end of the world. Like me, it can leave an opening for so many more exciting and new friendships to begin.