I Didn't Know We Were Saying Goodbye

For the last couple of years, I've found myself thinking about a friendship that I honestly believed would last the rest of my life.

Not because we talked every day.

Not because we saw each other every week.

Actually, it was kind of the opposite.

We had one of those friendships where life could get busy, months could pass, and we'd just pick right back up where we left off. There was never any keeping score. There was never any "you didn't call me enough" or "you didn't visit enough."

At least that's what I thought.

This friend wasn't just a friend. She was like family to me. In many ways, she was like a mother figure. She was there through some incredibly difficult chapters of my life. She drove me to doctor's appointments. She took me to meetings with my attorney while I was fighting through my lawsuit. She showed up when things were hard.

Then life happened.

Not in some dramatic way.

Just life.

I ended up buying a house. I bought a car. I moved. I was learning how to manage a completely different chapter of my life after years of surviving one crisis after another.

And somehow, without either of us ever saying it out loud, we stopped talking.

Not because we had a fight.

Not because anyone got angry.

Not because anyone said goodbye.

We just... stopped.

The strange part is that I never felt like I had ended the friendship.

I assumed we were still us.

I assumed that whenever one of us picked up the phone, we'd start right where we left off like we always had.

Then one day I reached out, and she made a comment about wondering why I had stopped talking to her.

That hit me harder than she probably realized.

Because I didn't stop talking to her.

But if I'm being honest, neither did she keep talking to me.

The phone works both ways.

That's what has made this so confusing.

I've spent a lot of time wondering if maybe she feels differently about the whole thing than I do. Maybe from her perspective, she was there during one of the hardest times of my life, and then after my settlement came through and I bought my house, she felt forgotten.

The thing is, that couldn't be further from the truth.

I didn't forget her.

I never stopped caring about her.

I never stopped appreciating everything she did for me.

Life simply got busy.

The same way life had gotten busy before.

The same way it had for both of us over the last twenty-five years.

What hurts is realizing that maybe we weren't operating under the same understanding anymore.

Maybe I thought we were still playing by the old rules.

The rules that said real friendship could survive long gaps.

The rules that said neither person had to keep score.

The rules that said love wasn't measured by how often someone called.

Maybe somewhere along the way those rules changed.

And maybe nobody ever had the conversation.

That's the part that makes me sad.

Not angry.

Not bitter.

Just sad.

Because when I think about this friendship, I don't think about disappointment.

I think about gratitude.

I think about the rides to appointments.

I think about the conversations.

I think about the years of shared history.

I think about someone who mattered deeply to me.

And honestly, I still hope she's doing well.

I still hope life has been good to her.

I still hope she's happy.

What I've realized is that some of the hardest losses in life aren't the ones that end with slammed doors and dramatic goodbyes.

Sometimes the hardest losses are the quiet ones.

The relationships that slowly drift into the distance while neither person fully understands how it happened.

The friendships you thought could survive anything.

The people you assumed would always be there.

The goodbyes you never knew were happening.

Maybe that's why this one still crosses my mind.

Because I never knew we were saying goodbye.

And if I'm being completely honest...

Part of me still isn't sure we did.