Friendship, Heartache, And Reframing The Stakes Of Platonic Loss

One morning last week, my sister sent me a video about how as women, our ex-best friend is our Roman Empire. In other words, no matter how much time has passed, those big friendships we’ve lost stick to our brains like glue. We can’t get over them. We think about them day in and day out. It hit me hard, realizing how absurdly accurate that is -- that I live my life with the woman who broke my heart humming a soft tune in the back of my mind. If you’re anything like me, you’re already thinking about her, the girl you thought you’d be standing next to on all your big days but who now is (cue the music) just somebody that you used to know.

For me, that girl’s name is Caroline. I met Caroline in Mr. Betty’s 6th grade science class. She was beautiful and tall and someone who I simultaneously envied and adored. She was smart and had interests other than men, and at night when she slept over, she’d never get mad at me for drifting into REM before the movie had even begun. In so many ways, growing up next to her taught me how to be a woman.

By the time we were 17 though, bursting at the seams of our small town and ready to graduate from our cushy High School in Westchester County, we were moving in completely different directions. At first, when our friendship started to fizzle out, I was overwhelmed with anger. When it was all said and done, and I was just a background actor in the story of her life, I was overcome with hurt and resentment that we had somehow left our sacred friendship space behind.