You're my best friend

[limey]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

It's nowhere near as painful as what you're going through, but I've been struggling recently with the loss of an old best friend as well. She took me on as a teenager and made me who I am today, no exaggeration. She was the matron of honor at my wedding, and one of only two best friends I've ever had. But over the last several years she has made it pretty clear that she has moved on, and I have had a very hard time accepting that. In this, Mr. Clod has been the voice of reason for me, so I'll just have to channel him since I'm not so good at embracing the following yet myself:

Do you have friends now? You do. (I have only a guess about who you are, but still I know for certain that you have friends, because you are here.)

Are you holding onto the friend, or the idea of the friend, the person she used to be?

Isn't it true that actually, that memory-friend has been gone for a long time?

Would it be fair to say that, by trying to hold on to her, you might as well be asking a completely different person to play her part--akin to going to a funeral and asking the deceased's sister to pretend to be her, for your sake?

And if you are prepared to ask a completely different person to play her part... couldn't the role be taken on by a new friend, after all?


Anyway, just some stuff that's been percolating in my own mind...

Clod, these words are very helpful to me. As I posted in another thread I, too, have lost the woman I thought of as my best friend, my chosen sister. She moved away about a year ago and for the first time in forty years I do not know where she is. No Christmas card from her and her family. Gone.
We went through a lot together, and it hurts that she's gone. But I have to accept that. All relationships require the voluntary engagement of those in them. Anon, you are in the same boat as Clod and myself, and Sundae. We have to accept the loss, mourn and move on.