Do memes imitate life or does life imitate memes?
I once saw a post featuring an old oil painting, the kind found in the illustrated Bible stories of my parents’ time (see also: White Jesus)—its caption, in 2008 Microsoft Word Art white read: “The real miracle is that Jesus had 12 close friends as a 30-year-old.”
It’s safe to say that I wheezed.
Come to think of it, since everything was part of a divine plan, I don’t think Jesus harbored any bad blood against Judas, who seems to have been fulfilling a necessary role in a larger plot and stage. I think some progressive theologians would agree.
Catholic school kid reminiscences aside, what a way to add closure to a friend breakup, huh?
Friend breakups hurt more than romantic breakups because more often than not, it was to our friends we turned to when our lovers felt more like strangers
Perhaps coming of age is more multi-season US TV than single-season K-drama; a series of life events that, to quote the mystic, poet, and lover Rumi, “bring us to ever-expanding rings of being.”
Our zeitgeist today is all about realizing that growth is lifelong: One doesn’t “just become an adult” but “continuously becomes.” You read that right, becoming, a verb, not just a one-time-big-time coming-of-age but a series of comings-of-age.
The yin to such yang would be that in the process of growth, we also shed old attachments. After each summer comes the proverbial autumn, a fall, and, a falling out. Enter the friend breakup.
If our first romantic breakups were our first coming-of-age, then perhaps the next might be a friend breakup (or more) sometime around our late 20s and early 30s.
Friend breakups hurt more than romantic breakups because more often than not, it was to our friends we turned to when our lovers felt more like strangers. Our barkada was our safe space and also the runway that egged us to take the leap of faith and eventually, the nest that caught us as we fell or celebrated our homecoming as we tied the knot.
Our barkadas were arguably more tahanan than our kasintahan. Cool how both Filipino words have “tears” as their root words huh?
It’s fine when friendships end because of abuse or repeated toxic behavior that’s been called out, but the rougher waters are in seas where no one is clearly at fault
And so when we find ourselves crying over losing our friends, the salt stings more.
It’s fine when friendships end because of abuse or repeated toxic behavior that’s been called out, but the rougher waters are in seas where no one is clearly at fault. And sometimes, it’s the slow burns that really cook, the gradual realization that the values, humor, goals, and more which glued your friendship before no longer stick around now.
As the pathways of our individual lives have led us to new places, we simply became different people with different priorities.
Sometimes, two high school besties finally open their dream cafe in their hometown having walked separate paths after college all while finding each other again, different people, but with notes that complement and harmonize.
But sometimes too, your decision to quiet quit the rat race and choose a slower lifestyle might run against the goals of a college confidant who took care of you (and vice versa) when drunk after midterms, an old friend whose choices have made her a grind-and-hustle girl boss.
If being authentically oneself is about having life options to act on, then a woman choosing the Way of the Girlboss is no less empowered than a woman choosing the Way of the Girlmoss.
Sometimes, exercising these choices may result in the end of friendships and there’s no way around it, no sugar to coat the bitter reality. But it’s equally human to attempt harmonizing the bitter and the sweet, the espresso and milk, so let me attempt a flat white:
The world is round, and while paths diverge, sometimes, after much meandering, after each person, each walker has found treasures from their respective journeys, old paths may find new convergences.
And sometimes they don’t. And that’s okay, too.
Even when you find a new village eager to raise a new you, past memories and attachments may hinder your attempts to open up. Really? Should I allow people in again knowing it can end? But what hurts more? The pain of separation or the pain of loneliness?
But in a zeitgeist also perceiving an interconnected world, it’s comforting to realize that each moment of (seemingly) individual clarity, joy, and whatnot nourishes The Whole. We may no longer be invited to the tables of old friends, but whenever we’re in a good place, I’d like to think that the unselfish joy we radiate reaches love past, present, and future—and vice versa.
Should I allow people in again knowing it can end? But what hurts more? The pain of separation or the pain of loneliness?
And that might include people who (seemingly) no longer share a path with us. It’s been said that though many of the stars in the sky light years away are actually dead, their light is a last breath belatedly reaching us on Earth, and yet there’s also no denying that such light has still guided many a sailor across a dark sea.
Sometimes, the hardest grief we bear is for those who still walk the Earth, over people who saw us at our worst, thus allowing us to eventually come into our best.
Having known such best, I guess, is its own gift, even if we no longer walk together, bes.
Lead photo from Unsplash+ in collaboration with Getty Images
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