The Ghosted Friendship

     I read all the same memes and inspiration quotes as everyone else about how some people come into our lives for a season, serve a purpose, and then fade out. Their time is done, their dime is spent, the ride is over. And I get it. Some friendships don't last a lifetime. We are not meant to ride off into the sunset with everyone.
     But just because I understand the sentiment and practicalities of it doesn't mean the emotions are not hard. We tangle ourselves into our friendships when we open ourselves up.There is a vulnerability of being real with people.  Some of the heart strings wind and knot together. Significant memories are formed especially during major life moments. These people stand next to you through births, marriages, deaths, and so much more. They may be there in your children's first birthday party photos or a hundred other places filling photo albums and smart phone storage space. They may have been there holding your hand as your found yourself or did something new and noteworthy. So unraveling a history takes time and a few severed arteries. There is blood loss and the pain of regrowth as we scab over and move onto the next someone meant to walk that part of our path with us.
     Yet, sometimes I feel haunted. It's the awkward presence, the cold prickling of the skin when you know you have to see them in a familiar setting be it at a school pick up or birthday parties. Polite manners demand that you at least acknowledge the other person. But an pregnant pause, the dead corpse of what once was stands between you fetid and rotting making stock phrases about the weather even harder to get out. The memories hover unseen, the someone that I used to know, standing in contrast to this familiar stranger. Sometimes the unresolved feelings surface, an emotional heartburn. Anger, pain, resentment, and feelings of unworthiness follow too like pall bearers of the dead relationship.
     It's easy to say its okay. That these things happen. Because they do. Friendships die, sometimes quietly sometimes in a hacked-off, blood drenched Frank Miller kind of way. But just like grieving a real death, we cycle through the feelings of anger, depression, denial, and acceptance. And just like a real death, it doesn't move in a smooth circular pattern but more like the lines of a heart monitor, jagged in peaks and valleys of okay and not okay.

    

 Sometimes we are friends forever

     Sometimes its for a day

 some friends are meant to fade

 and slowly drift away.

But whether its forever

 or merely just a season

 Each friend adds to our lives

each friendship has a reason.