The coronavirus pandemic fundamentally changed every aspect of my life, but it had the biggest impact on my friendships. During the pandemic, I lost one of my longest friendships.
I’ve had the same group of friends since I was a freshman in high school. I sometimes joked that we were the three amigos because if you saw one the others weren’t far behind. I thought we were inseparable.
We had our share of disagreements, but we always seemed to find our way back to each other. When this pandemic started, I didn’t think it would harm my longest friendship.
At first, the pandemic helped me grow closer to this friend. We spent hours talking on FaceTime, texting and planning out our post-college lives. I told her things I had never told anyone outside of my family. While the fate of the world was uncertain, I had her.
Then it all started to go downhill.
I talked to her for the last time on Christmas Eve. She FaceTimed me that day because my ex-boyfriend contacted her trying to get in contact with me. The conversation did get intense as we both expressed what the next course of action should be.
However, by the time the conversation ended, I thought everything was fine. I reached out to her on New Year’s Eve and got no response. I didn’t think much of it as I figured she was busy doing something to celebrate the new year.
But as January came and went, I noticed we hadn’t spoken in a while. I decided to reach out again. To this day I never got a response.
I was upset she wasn’t talking to me. I tried to rationalize her actions thinking maybe she was too busy to respond. After a month of doing that, I started to lose hope she would ever talk to me again, but couldn’t understand why. The question “what did I do” was constantly in my mind.
One day, my insecurities got the best of me. I broke down and cried, grieving the friendship we once shared. I felt upset and angry that she wouldn’t talk to me. People around me gave me words of encouragement, but I still wasn’t feeling better. I became so upset that I deleted every trace of her I had on my phone—photos, contact information, everything was gone.
What helped me start my healing process was prayer. I don’t come from a deeply religious family, but I learned about God at a very early age. When I was 13, my family and I started attending church regularly, and I really enjoyed it.
The lessons I learned from church helped me navigate my feelings and put my worries in the hands of the Lord. I began to ask the Lord for the power to heal and over time I started feeling better.
I tried to maintain our friendship through the pandemic. I tried to keep an open line of communication between the two of us. I also made an effort to respond to texts or phone calls if I missed them and even planned social distanced meet-ups when it was safe to do so. The implications of the pandemic were just too severe for our friendship to handle.
Now, I’m not so upset about what happened. I don’t want a friend that can just up and leave my life without trying to have a conversation and resolve whatever issue they have with me.
I will always cherish the times we spent together. She will always have a special place in my heart, but this situation showed that she wasn’t meant to be in my life forever. As hard as it was to accept that, I’m starting to do just that and I know I will be okay.