I met my best friend when I was four and she was five. We were in the same dance class and became instant friends. Almost all of my childhood memories include her, almost all of my high school sleepovers, as well as my college and young adult happy hours. We went to different colleges but remained close, Skyping and calling and texting at all hours.
My friend met a string of silly boys I dated in the process of learning and unlearning myself. When I met her not-boyfriend boyfriend who later became her husband, I knew he was the perfect person for her. They were both always there for me amid a myriad of breakups, boy drama, school drama, and work drama.
When she got married, I was her maid of honor. When I got married, she was my matron of honor. I married someone with very different political views and personal hobbies. He struggled to hold space for her artistic, scholarly cohort of friends. I often felt caught in the middle. Soon, I had a child, and eight months later, I got pregnant again. She wasn’t sure she wanted kids at all. However, she always showed up to baby showers and birthday parties.
Slowly, though, our lives started to separate. When she turned 30, I tried to help her husband plan her milestone birthday. I was waved off with a “Let’s do a chill dinner, just us.” When her Instagram showed a “Thank you to all who made my 30th birthday a day to remember,” I realized I wasn’t invited. I called her crying. I was led to believe that it had really only been her brother that had come into town, and she was thanking him.
“I’m worried about you. You seem so emotional and sad since you had the baby,” she said.
I later found out from a mutual friend that there had been a party. I just wasn’t invited.
In 2018, she called me with the news that her dad had terminal cancer. I was literally at a wedding on a party boat in Mexico. I promised I would call when I returned home, but I never called. I didn’t know how to hold space for what she was going through. What if I didn’t say the right thing? I would surely say the wrong thing. I didn’t have the energy to respond. So I chose silence and distance. To this day, it’s one of my biggest regrets.
A year later when her father passed, I did not get a call. I found out on her brother’s social media. I finally called her, left a sobbing voicemail, and began to grieve. I wept for her loss, but I also wept for the places in me that were not equipped to be a present friend for her through that season. For the parts of me that were also lost.
I ended up writing her a letter apologizing for all of the ways I had failed in our friendship. For not being there for her when she needed me. For choosing ease and safety over imperfect presence.
It’s easy for me to think of all of the places I failed.
In an almost thirty year friendship that spans all of adolescence and early adulthood, there are bound to be failures. Many, many failures. But there was also so much beauty in our friendship. So many shared experiences, so much shared life.
I sent the letter without the expectation of receiving anything in return.
A year or so went by with no response, but one day out of nowhere I received a letter from her.
In it, she forgave me and also asked for forgiveness. She acknowledged the places our friendship had changed. At the end of the letter, she wrote, “I hope that we can forgive and be at peace with each other. Friendships evolve over time. Maybe we can accept that the space between us doesn’t have to prevent us from sending support and positivity to each other?”
And it doesn’t.
When a snow storm wiped out the power grid in Texas in early 2021, we texted each other to make sure we were safe and warm. When a decade-old picture of us pops up on my phone, I send it to her and honor the beautiful girls we were and are. I still follow and like her pictures on social media. No, we are not as close as we once were—we may never be again—but we are choosing to hold space for what was while still fully living in what is.
This Red Tent woman has requested to remain anonymous. We applaud her courage to risk sharing this part of her story with our community. It is our privilege to honor and protect her identity.
I lost a dear friend because we could not figure out how to “hold space” between us. It is a sadness I still carry, almost thirty years since I last saw her. Than you for sharing.