Time reveals that lost friendships can be blessings in disguise.
It’s 2015, and the buzz of ten thousand people in a crowded stadium surrounds me. The noise is deafening, and the concert hasn’t even started yet.
Eventually, I spot the iconic blonde hair of my favourite singer emerging from centre stage. Taylor Swift struts out, and everybody screams like their lives depend on it. I beam at my best friend Eva* sitting next to me, and she grins back as we join everyone emptying their lungs at a breakneck speed.
It’s one of many moments Eva and I share. We’re two peas in a pod. Concerts, flitting between our classes in university lecture halls, grabbing coffees together. There is rarely a day when she isn’t by my side.
We’re both active on social media, so we send each other fun articles and post Buzzfeed quizzes and memes on each other’s Facebook timelines.
These are the memories that Facebook reminds me of each year, a broken yellow brick road of Internet crumbs I can follow. Tracing the outlines of what had once been, a friendship with someone I no longer speak to.
Hindsight is 20/20, and you can see relationship cracks when you look back.
How did a friendship that occupied my whole world suddenly dissolve into nothing? Well, there were signs.
There was the way she had to make everything a competition. When my boyfriend at the time said he wasn’t sure how he felt about a political issue, she had to chime in with, “Well, my boyfriend is a feminist!”.
I didn’t realize I had entered a competition of who had the partner with the best moral compass. It baffled me how her insecurity would get the best of her.
She would compare herself to others constantly and held onto grudges like her life depended on it. If anyone dared to smite her, it was game over. Anger would overcome her face like a thunderous storm cloud.
I knew she’d been through trauma, much of which I knew nothing about. And I didn’t pry or push her to talk about the things that weighed heavily on her heart.