To Dump Your Friends and Kill Your Darlings: A Lesson from an Article I Wrote Many Years Ago.

The phrase ‘to kill your darlings’ is one many writers are familiar with and equally despise. It is advice given when editing work, whereby you’re told to get rid of parts and passages you may have grown to love but do not propel the story forward. It’s hard to let go of writings that you hold dear to you, as writers hold their work very close to their hearts - so I don’t think it’s that far-fetched to appropriate the language for the purpose of this piece. Letting go, in any context, isn't easy.

It’s been a while since I have published anything personal here, so having come across an old article I wrote for my friend Sinawo’s magazine some years ago, I was made aware of a position I held on friendship breakups and the events that unfold when one has to deal with them. I had written the article from a detached position, as a researcher who had spoken with people and garnered the material and you can tell.

I have since lived a little, met people I have loved and lost along the way, and I can say I know how it feels to be hurt by a friendship ending, so we'll tackle that. I have been cut off, and I have let people go as well. The two experiences may be different, but the pang that arises when one thinks of the memories and the years put into them is all the same.

I had initially wanted to investigate how friendships end and how one deals with and moves on from this gutting experience that occurs in almost all our lives and took to my socials to ask a few people what they felt when they had to end a friendship, or when they were dumped and, depending on the answers, formulated follow-up questions that ranged from what they would do differently should time gift them with a second or third chance. I also asked if they would even want their friends back. I mean, honestly, who wouldn’t want their friends back?

You’d be surprised.

What is terrible about this, though, is how when friendships end, we don’t talk about them. We are expected to get over it like the hurt isn't something with as much weight as if you were hurting from the ending of a sexual relationship – something I find rather annoying and insulting.

When I first wrote the article, I agreed with the people who spoke with me when they confessed that the heartache that comes from losing a friend cannot be compared to any other; in fact, they believed that the loss hurts more than a romantic breakup. I could not relate at the time as the only time I had lost a friend was to death and that was excruciating. I found the permanence of the ordeal incomparable to that of something that I believed could be rectified by taking a phone and calling someone up to talk to them. This was not an article on the struggle Olympics, I quickly told myself, and neither was it about me.

Friendships end for many reasons – you could be friends with someone right now and find out later in the day that they no longer find you good enough to hang around, or you could offend them and they will have to cleanse their own space of you, many of these are subject to the person and their emotional investment in the relationship – but regardless of all that, getting over them is the hard part.

The lesson here is on letting go. At least, that is what a former colleague of mine said when I interviewed him. He failed to mention something else: what it is we are letting go of. I argued that it would be so easier to accept the end of this one relationship and let go if the concept of friendship break-ups was not something that is trivialised and invalidated by society as we know it. A person who has lost a lover or someone with whom they had been romantic is valid in their brokenness and depression, however, we tend to turn a blind eye to the topic in question.

Up until recently, we ourselves weren’t as outspoken about how we don’t always have to question why someone felt the need to relieve themselves of you, how their decision to cut you off is acceptable even without reason. I mean, sure we need a reason, but they don’t always need to provide it.

Up until recently, we did not feel the need to have conversations on so many other topics or we did not have the language and space to do so; and that, too, is a lesson I have learned. We do so much now that we weren’t able to back then, and that is an important shift in growing as people. It enforces a culture that the future generation will do well with because it is taught to them at such a young age that things need to be spoken about and understood, instead of being assumed.

Accepting that friendships end is okay and all, but it does not change the fact that it hurts. It hurts when you think about memories made, the plans that never came to fruition, as well as all the things that happened after that could have been greater shared.

All of those meaningful conversations you had with your best friend can't happen anymore. The inside jokes are slowly forgotten while the memories tied to them linger. It is depressing. You find yourself emotionally gutted for a while, feeling the loss of a giant part of your life. Not being able to reach out for help when you’re going through something becomes an eye-opener: for the first time you realise that you are on your own and have to deal with whatever it is alone as opposed to the many times when someone was always there with a shoulder and an ear.

It gets even worse, trust me it does, when you were part of a clique: the awkwardness of having your shared friends pick sides and split their time amongst the two of you – heck, they could even single you out and dump you altogether.

That is just how detrimental friendship breakups can get.

We invest our all into relationships on the belief that just by giving ourselves to people, they too will give themselves to us, hence the longevity of the relationship is something we assume to be solid and already covered.

What is terrible about this is how when friendships end, we don’t talk about them. We are kind of expected to get over it like it was not that important on the virtue of it not having been a sexual relationship – something I find annoying and insulting. Friendships mean so much more than romantic relationships because of that very reason of its non-sexual nature.

Friends become the family we choose.

I have come to understand friendship in a new way. They are dynamic, each one different from the other. We build relationships with friends we think are stronger than super glue, and for a while they are; but it’s hard to make those friendships last because things happen – we grow up and people change: someone will have a baby, someone else will get married, and another person just gets so sucked up in their career that they forget to answer your text messages about meeting up and the rest feels offended. All of this is okay, if not for the fact that we are meant to adapt as life changes. Stagnancy is a virus to growth. Paint me a cynic, but I do believe people are supposed to come and go from your life – each with their own lessons and experiences that you ought to use to learn and unlearn stuff from your own life and that only a select few people will be fortunate enough to be friends till the end, but we need not push them to do so when there isn't due cause. That is something I still believe in from the original article.

The saying ‘the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb’ is one that emphasises that we tend to form deeper bonds and relationships with friends than we do with family. Friends become the family we choose, so it becomes harder when we have to deal with the aftermath of a failed friendship, having to succumb to a void that was once filled by someone who meant so much to us.

While this article taught me that it’s important to accept and embrace the change, it is also worth noting that context is important. Some losses are greater than others, and we have to deal with the reality that we are humans and we are susceptible to feelings. They aren’t so bad, so allow yourself to feel them.