People are meant to come in and out of our lives. It's be pretty boring if we were surrounded by the same people all the time. Like characters in a story, each new person adds a little bit of something to our individual stories. These characters can stick around for minutes, hours, weeks, months, years, decades, or longer. It may not take long for them to have an impact on our lives and often times we don't realize what they've added until we notice their absence.
Several years ago my path crossed with someone who became a very good friend. We had a lot in common, belonged to the same young professionals group, laughed at the same things, hung around in the same circles, had mutual friends, and pretty quickly became friends ourselves.
A few years after we met, her life (and job) decided to take her across the pond to the United Kingdom. While I was sad to see her go I knew it was going to be a great thing for her, plus her work travels would bring her state-side quite often, so while she was leaving, I never really considered her gone.
I ended up going on a vacation of a lifetime and visited her once she got settled. We had a great time and I was able to see a part of the world I never thought I get to see. I took hundreds of photos and even today think it was one of the best vacations ever!
Shortly after I returned I received an email from my friend apologizing, saying that during my visit she wasn't herself and hoped there weren't any bad vibes. I must have been in vacation euphoria (or she hid it really well) (or both) because I didn't pick up on anything. I told her not to worry about it and reassured her that if she needed anything or just wanted to talk, to let me know.
Since then, our friendship has slowly dwindled. I occasionally would get an email from her apologizing for not keeping in touch, that things weren't going too well, etc. She got a new position at work so her travels back across the pond weren't as often and our emails went from pretty regular to now, non-existent. I've reached out in the past but have gotten very little back in the way of a response.
I received a happy birthday wish on my last birthday followed up by a note that she would be in touch but that never happened. A couple months ago she emailed me to say she was state-side but wouldn't be able to get together. Then, last week, I realized I hadn't been seeing many updates on Facebook and it was then I realized I had been un-friended. And it hurt.
It wasn't the first person to un-friend me but it was the first friend to do so.
I guess I'll never fully understand what happened to our friendship and why it ended the way it did. One of the things I loved about our friendship was that it was consistent despite the distance.
I don't think I did anything wrong and I would hope if I did she would tell me and while I don't think I'll ever be ok with no longer having her as a friend I'm choosing to not focus on that. Instead, I'll focus on the time we were in each other's lives and the memories from that. She's got an amazing life and I know she'll continue to do wonderful things and I've been blessed that for a brief time she was a character in my story.
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