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Growing apart from a childhood friend

Ginnyweasley97

I had been best friends with this girl ever since we went to a private elementary school, and now we have grown apart slowly but it's obvious. When we were in elementary school, the economy tanked and I had to go to a public school. I rarely said something against her because I really
wanted to protect and keep our friendship alive but sometimes it's annoying especially now when we have grown up and both of us have been through some stuff. In elementary school we were both Christians when I moved to a public school, I was exposed to so many different people and cultures that I slowly began to change my religious beliefs. I really want and try to be there for her, because I love her no matter what but it's hard when all I get back is negativity. About three years ago, I messaged her on Facebook, asking her to call me and she said she would. A week passed so I called her myself and left her a voicemail but she never called me back. That was the nail in the coffin. Sometimes I end up blaming myself and wondering what I could do to protect this relationship. I always end up realizing that there are not much I really can do. I always try to be honest and if she tells something or does somehing I always try to ignore it and sees it from other perspectives, while she would get mad for "little" unimportant things that best friend should understand. She is good at freezing me out. The only thing I may have done wrong during our friendship is not being honest; with that I mean that every time she said or did something I found not so nice I never said it hurts my feelings but instead ignored it and acted like nothing happened. I love my childhood best friend and will always do it. I wish the best for her and hope she gets everything she wishes for, she deserves it because she is one of the strongest human beings I know. Maybe she feels, that our friendship just doesn’t work, because she is a right wing conservative and I am much more liberal and that she feels I have become a person to be around with who knows who.....


Growing apart from a childhood friend




When a friendship you had with someone starts to end, you want there to be a reason. Sometimes I wonder if she ended our friendship because I changed so much. She is into running, I am into yoga and I am a bit of a hippie. She is majoring in photography and I am going into the healthcare field. A concrete reason as to why you no longer feel the way you once did about your best friend, the person you grew up with and have been close with for forever. A reason would make it easier. It would make you feel less guilty. It would make the dissolution less strange and painful.


But sometimes there isn’t one. Sometimes you grow apart from your best friend and there really isn’t a good reason as to why. It might be completely one-sided too, which makes you feel even worse. You’re drifting away and they still feel like nothing’s changed. You wonder if you’re a cold-hearted jerk for throwing away years of friendship. People are really invested in this idea of time being the ultimate marker for closeness and I think it’s sort of BS. “We’ve been friends just for so long, you know?” Yeah, so what? You’ve been friends for years and now you’ve grown apart. Do you keep it going, do you force the connection, just because it’s been going on for so long? If anything, keeping a friend around just because you’ve known them for so long seems more heartbreaking than just ending it. You’ll just always be reminded of how close you USED to be and how everything’s now changed and you’re not sure why. To me, that seems more painful than just cutting the friendship off.


Sometimes you just grow apart from people. You get older, your personality matures or devolves, and all of a sudden you find yourself not having a whole lot in common with someone you once did. The closest contact I have with my childhood best friend is that we are friends on Facebook, but she never likes my posts. This is just a casualty of growing up. For some reason, “growing apart” is the hardest thing to come to terms with. You wish you could just get into an explosive fight with your best friend and use that as a scapegoat. The reality, however, is that you will always love and care about them. You just don’t necessarily feel the need to have them in your life anymore. The catch up phone calls are becoming forced, you’re grasping at straws trying to come up with conversation topics. They live in a different state and aren’t involved in the day-to-day of your life which makes things difficult. You begin to dread these catch up sessions because not only do they take forever but there’s this underlying tension you are both trying so hard to avoid. The more you try to pretend the friendship is the same, the more obvious it becomes that it’s changed.


Growing apart from a childhood friend


There’s no easy solution for this. What do you do? Do you call them up and say, “Look, I love you to death and always will, I really don't care that you consider yourself a right wing conservative, there are plenty of things to talk about religion and politics does not have to be it” You can’t do that! Can you?


Or do you just let it slowly die? You ignore their phone calls and then finally you put the nail in the coffin by being in the same city as them and “forgetting” to see them. That’ll let them know that it’s officially over.


I don’t know. You wish you could just be honest with each other but that’s hard, But you know what? Lying is hard too! It might even be harder than telling the truth. If you grow apart from someone, can you just be real about it? Can you ever tell them how you really feel?


Growing apart from a childhood friend


Growing apart from a childhood friend
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