I am not a sometime friend. I don’t know how to be.
If I call you my friend, particularly if I call you one of my best friends, there is weight behind the word. I am a ride-or-die kind of friend. I show up. I listen. I remember the things you told me three conversations ago. I check on you when something doesn’t sound right. I celebrate your victories without needing to make them about me, and when your world falls apart, I will sit down in the rubble with you without asking how long we’re going to be there.
I don’t require constant communication. I don’t need daily texts, weekly phone calls, or proof that I still matter to you. Life gets busy. People get overwhelmed. Sometimes we disappear into our own lives for a while because there simply isn’t enough of us to go around. I understand seasons.
What I don’t understand is silence used in place of communication.
There is a difference between needing space and quietly removing someone from your life while they are still standing there wondering what changed. And maybe that distinction matters more to me than it does to other people.
Because I am an adult. I understand boundaries.
You can tell me, I’m going through some shit right now and I don’t have much to give. You can tell me, I need to pull inward for a while. You can tell me, Something has changed for me and I don’t know how to explain it yet. Hell, you can simply say, I’m going through a season. Please be here when I get back.
And I will. That’s the thing. I will.
I will give you room without punishing you for needing it. I will not demand explanations you aren’t ready to give. I will not make your difficult season about how inconvenient your absence is for me. I will leave the porch light on and trust that when you’re ready, you’ll find your way back.
But you have to tell me you left.
Because there is something uniquely painful about watching someone quietly step out of a friendship without ever acknowledging that they’re doing it.
The responses get shorter. The conversations become different. Things that once would have turned into an hour of talking suddenly get a reaction or a couple of words. You stop reaching out first. Then you barely respond when I do. The warmth changes. The curiosity disappears.
And eventually I realize I’m no longer having a friendship with you. I’m maintaining the memory of one.
Maybe you have reasons.
Maybe you’re overwhelmed. Maybe your life is complicated. Maybe something happened that has absolutely nothing to do with me. Maybe you don’t have the emotional bandwidth you once had.
And yes, maybe it does have something to do with me.
Maybe I inadvertently said or did something that upset you. That’s possible too. I’m human. I fuck up. I misunderstand things. I can say something with one intention and have it land completely differently. And I am a lot. I know this about myself. I have a big personality, strong feelings, strong opinions, and I don’t expect everyone to experience me exactly the way I experience myself.
But if I have done something that hurt you, talk to me.
Don’t make me guess. Don’t quietly punish me for something I don’t even know happened. Don’t change the way you speak to me, withdraw your warmth, or slowly remove yourself while expecting me to somehow decipher the offense from the change in your behavior.
Give me the opportunity to own my shit. Give me the opportunity to apologize if I owe you an apology. Give me the opportunity to hear your perspective, explain mine if there has been a misunderstanding, or change my behavior if I’ve genuinely hurt someone I care about. I don’t expect friendship to mean we will never disappoint, irritate, misunderstand, or hurt one another. We’re human. That’s going to happen.
I expect friendship to mean we can fucking talk about it when it does.
And then, if you need space, take it.
I can respect that too.
Because whether you’re overwhelmed, going through something I know nothing about, angry with me, reevaluating things in your own life, or simply realizing you don’t want this friendship anymore, I can deal with the truth.
What I cannot do is understand something you refuse to communicate.
So instead, I am left standing outside a door I didn’t know had been closed, trying to figure out whether I should knock, wait, leave, or wonder what the hell I did wrong.
That is the part that hurts. Not necessarily the distance. The absence of honesty.
Because if the friendship mattered enough for me to be invited into your life, I would like to believe it mattered enough for me to be told when something changed.
And maybe that’s where I am different.
When something matters to me, I talk about it.
It might be uncomfortable. I might stumble over the words. I might need time before I know exactly what I want to say. But I believe people deserve communication, especially people I have allowed close enough to know me.
Friendship is intimacy.
Sometimes I think friendship is far more intimate than being romantically or sexually involved with someone.
We give our friends pieces of ourselves without the scripts that come with romantic relationships. There aren’t always anniversaries or labels or expectations telling us what we’re supposed to mean to each other. We choose one another repeatedly without contracts, obligation, sex, shared finances, or a relationship status holding us together.
We just choose to stay.
That makes friendship sacred to me.
Which is exactly why I don’t take its disappearance lightly.
When someone I consider a friend slowly changes their behavior toward me without explanation, eventually I stop asking what happened.
Eventually I believe the behavior.
I stop reaching. I stop checking. I stop trying to resurrect something the other person seems determined to let die quietly.
Not because I suddenly stopped caring.
That’s probably the hardest part.
I can still care about you and stop reaching for you.
Those things can exist together.
I can miss the friendship and accept that it no longer exists in the form I knew. I can remember conversations fondly and still decide I won’t chase another one. I can hope you’re okay without continuing to knock on a door you’ve repeatedly chosen not to open.
And if you come back someday, I won’t be cruel.
I’ll be cordial.
I’ll probably even be genuinely glad to know you’re okay.
But I won’t necessarily be standing exactly where you left me.
Because while you were gone, something happened to me too.
I learned what it felt like to be pushed outside without explanation. I learned what it felt like to watch someone gradually withdraw while pretending nothing had changed. I learned that when given the opportunity to communicate with me, you chose silence instead.
And I don’t open myself up to that twice.
Not with friendship.
People sometimes think loyalty means remaining indefinitely available to someone regardless of how they treat you.
I don’t.
My loyalty is enormous, but it isn’t unconditional access.
Being a ride-or-die friend doesn’t mean I’ll stand beside an empty chair forever.
It means that when you’re my friend, I’m there.
Really there.
And if you had simply told me you needed to disappear for a while, I probably would have understood.
You didn’t need a perfect explanation. You didn’t need to tell me everything. You didn’t need to apologize for having a complicated life.
You could have given me one sentence.
I’m going through a season. Please be here when I get back.
I would have left the porch light on.
But when you leave without saying anything, when you slowly turn warmth into distance and conversation into silence, eventually I have to accept what your behavior is telling me.
So I turn the light off.
Not because I stopped caring.
Not because the friendship meant nothing.
But because it meant too much for me to keep standing outside in the cold pretending I haven’t noticed that you closed the door.
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The Secrets of Wynter Rayne 