I’ve had a few failed relationships in my time. Not just my partners, the boys that came and went before I met my husband.
The other relationships.
With friends.
There is always a special bond between a woman and her girlfriends. Gossips over coffee and wine are not merely ways of exchanging information. It is how we connect with one another and how we find our place in our community.
It dates back centuries. Women gathered together at rivers to wash the clothes, in circles as they weaved baskets, or under cloaks as they howled at the moon and brewed potions for health and wellbeing.
Girlfriends lift you up when times are tough, and beam with pride when things go right. They are the ones that listen to our sorrows without judgement and give you awkward hugs when you need them, even if they know you’re not a hugger. They laugh with you when you’re silly, giggle at your faults and pull you up when you are out of line, with a smile and a ‘I love you but…’
Girlfriends play a vital role in a woman’s life. If not for them, all those little life frustrations would be dealt with by your partner, and god knows how that would go! Sometimes you don’t need a fixer, you need a listener. And girlfriends are awesome at that when you provide tea and cookies.
But what happens when these relationships abruptly end? Or when you both come to the conclusion that you are heading in different directions and the relationship no longer serves?
They say people come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime, but that doesn’t make the loss any easier.
The DeFuze team had this conversation recently. Each of us sharing our own story of lost friendships, and the struggle of trying to make sense of it.
I was there about 8 years ago. I lost someone I had poured my heart out to, someone who had seen me at my best and my worst, and whom I thought loved me anyways. We could look at each other and utter a few random words, and would know exactly what the other was talking about. We would talk and laugh for hours and hours. We travelled together, we loved and lost together, we shared our deepest self.
Then, almost as suddenly as she came into my life, she was gone.
It was confusing, hurtful and to this day, I still feel a tinge of pain when I think about her. I will never understand what happened, and maybe I don’t need to, but it still hurts.
During the end, I often thought about that saying: A reason, a season or a lifetime.
I thought she was a lifetime friend, my best friend. I was wrong. So was she a reason or a season?
I wracked my brain, wondering about the lessons she taught me, the changes in my life at that time, or how long we had known each other.
It hurt to think that something so meaningful to me was turning out to be meaningless.
Then I pondered: Maybe I was the reason or season in HER life?
Maybe she learnt something from me as much as I learnt from her?
Or maybe I just need to stop bloody over thinking it…
Maybe I just need to accept that, for whatever reason, our friendship was never going to last forever. That there was no grand reason for us coming together, or for our friendship ending.
Maybe we just expired.
It’s a hard concept to grasp sometimes. That someone or something can just float in and out of your life for no exceptional reason. That something can mean so much to us, but be lost in an instant. No matter how hard we try, somethings just cannot be held on to forever.
It doesn’t have to be one person’s fault. There doesn’t need to be a fight, or even a conversation. Sometimes we simply need to
let
it
go.
That can often be the hardest part. Letting go. Watching something slip away.
But it doesn’t have to be an earth shattering event. Relationships can just end. Each person that enters into your life does not have to meet the criteria of a reason, a season or a lifetime.
And I suppose it is up to us to decide who is worth letting go, and who is worth fighting for…
Michelle x
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