life is too short to lose friends

Hi angels,

I felt like writing this today, not for any particular reason but just because I thought it should be something I talked about, kind of like a little chat with you guys and a little update on where I am right now in life.

*note: I wrote this post a few months ago hence why some of the timing may be off*

I met up with my best friend yesterday for the first time in 8 months, we stopped talking around November / December last year because physical and mental distance were tearing us apart and we both ended up on kind of bad terms with each other, for absolutely no reason at all. We’d been best friends for around 5 years prior to this and apart from this incident, we had never fallen out or stopped speaking before, so it was weird for this to happen to us. Especially since we’re definitely not the kind of people to argue or get involved in drama.

To cut a long story short, things had been on and off and a very shaky and an explosive argument at the beginning of this year led us to stop trying with each other completely, after it happened I think we both thought that was the end of our friendship and we would never see or speak to each other again. Apart from yesterday, we hadn’t spoken in 3 months and even before that, we had only spoken around twice, the conversation being lifeless and awkward and as you can imagine, it ended very quickly.

Now, this is completely unlike me. I keep myself to myself, stay out of drama and I’m not a confrontational person in the slightest. I don’t argue, fight, or say bad things about others and so to have this grey cloud looming over me regarding my best friend was definitely not something I enjoyed. After the initial argument at the beginning of the year I think we both knew that it was the end of our friendship like I mentioned, so I just tried to move on because I felt like a lot of true colours were shown for both of us, and now I knew where I stood.

Months went by and I was doing pretty well actually, I’m a very big believer in the universe and that everything happens for a reason, so I was just drifting along and letting everything take its course, accepting that things were what they were and that was the end of it. However, over the past couple of weeks I had found old journal entries, emails, text messages and blog posts from the both of us and it made me feel very sad for what I’d lost – yes maybe we weren’t supposed to be in each other’s lives anymore, but our friendship had been one that ensured we brought out the best in each other and somewhere we could be ourselves and enjoy things other people necessarily wouldn’t be so enthusiastic about – talking about the universe, spirituality, writing, poetry, creating stories, watching paranormal shows and believing every second of it. I couldn’t do that with anyone else and I suddenly felt myself feeling very lonely and isolated, was I really going to let negative feelings and my pride get in the way of appreciating something that made me happy and changed my life for the better? I wanted to remember the good times if not for anything else, I wanted to leave things on a high note.

I reached out (apprehensively – we’d left things on bad terms so I wasn’t sure how to act or even react, it all felt horribly weird). My aim was to talk things through face to face and basically lay our cards on the table and resolve things like adults. I had wanted to do this a few months prior but because of the physical distance between us it wasn’t possible, which meant nothing was ever discussed and therefore led to even more tension building up. I was hoping I’d have more luck the second time around.

We agreed to meet and to be honest, I was absolutely terrified. I felt intimidated and extremely nervous – like I said, I’m not a confrontational person at all and so the second I parked up I wanted to turn the car around and drive back home. Luckily, I didn’t. My friend met me outside and we took her dog for a walk, the weather was super sunny and we were gone for about an hour. We acted completely normal with each other like nothing had happened and honestly, it felt like I’d never been away. There was no tension, no negative feelings / energy, nothing. It was super normal and I found myself relaxing instantly, though I also wasn’t so surprised as like I mentioned earlier, the both of us hate confrontation, drama, negativity etc., we were both mature enough to let things like that go.

By the time we’d been on a walk and gone full circle, we still hadn’t addressed the elephant in the room. I’d already written a letter expressing my feelings (writer mode for me is constantly on) to give her just in case I forgot to mention anything or didn’t bring it up when we actually met because like I said, things were currently running completely normal.

We were nearly back where we started and suddenly my friend dropped the dreaded line, “So, what did you want to meet and talk about?”, she and I both knew why we were there but things were going so nicely, I already had the letter in my bag ready  and I didn’t even really know how to bring it up.

For the next 2 hours we sat in my car and talked about absolutely everything that had happened, there was never any ‘he said / she said’ about it or trying to point the finger because it was general lack of communication that had led us here in the first place – neither of us had necessarily done anything wrong. Her mum came outside halfway through our chat saying it was nice to see me and that she’d missed me and I got out the car and gave her a hug. I was super close with all of her family beforehand and her house was like my second home, it’s kind of like that thing when you break up with someone and miss seeing their family every day.

After chatting for another half an hour maybe, we went inside and sat with her family just chatting like we always used to and everything felt so, so normal. I left her house that night feeling so content, happy and generally just proud to have had the confidence to sort something out that could have easily been left alone. I’m very lucky to know such forgiving and caring people, if this situation was with another friend, the outcome may not have been so peachy.

Things are now completely normal again and I have my best friend back, all because I fought my pride and fear and reached out to resolve something that would have been left on bad terms for the rest of our lives otherwise. My aim was to resolve things, clear the air and have no negative feelings between us – I didn’t know how she would react and I didn’t know if we would be friends again after it, I thought maybe we would just clear the air and move on separately with our lives but luckily that didn’t happen, and my life is back to the way it was 8 months ago, which is the way I liked it.

It’s very simple to take the easy option and just not try, but that’s not the kind of person I am and I’d rather just be mature enough to resolve things, even if it’s just for my own peace of mind. Sometimes you have to be the bigger person and just push your pride away, put your differences aside and do the right thing – anything that helps you move on is the right thing. I was doing it to move forward for myself and to clear the air, because there is nothing I hate more than negative feelings and things being left on bad terms.

Luckily, I got the best possible outcome but situations won’t always end that way, if it helps you to move on in life then it is always worth a try and just remember, life is too short to lose friends.

All my love,

Chloe .xx