My Best Friend's Eulogy

The invisible pain of Friendship Breakups.

It’s been over a year since I posted a five minute video to my TikTok account, talking about the feeling of being left behind by a friend and wondering why the hell it hurt so badly when it was never mentioned. Books, shows, movies, music — it was never really talked about.

How could my heart be more broken by her leaving me than it had ever been by anyone? No matter who they’d been to me?

How could I be fundamentally changed, irreparably scarred, by a thing that wasn’t deemed worthy enough to give space in cultural or societal conversation?

That TikTok got millions and millions of views, over a hundred thousand comments, and it continues to find people every day. It struck a chord.

Of course it did.

It’s been three and a half years since my best friend left me suddenly. I wrote the following the day I knew it had happened.

I wish I had found something like this then. God, I felt so alone.

This is not the end of the conversation, but at least, I hope, a beginning. I intend to keep having it, here on Substack, on TikTok, in real life.

Because there are so many of us who carry this disenfranchised grief for so much longer than, perhaps, we need to. There is healing to be had.

It is (slowly) getting better.

I hope this helps someone who needs it. Hang in there.

MY BEST FRIEND’S EULOGY

The day I found out that you were gone, I fell to my knees and wept. The loss of you moved into my heart like a hurricane - violent and sudden and hungry. It tore the roof off and sent spiderweb cracks through the windows. The water swallowed my words before they got past my mouth - reached into my throat until it flooded my chest. It touched everything I had - my energy, my thoughts, my love, my dreams - and I will never be the same.

I wasn’t prepared for it.

I’d never thought to be prepared for it.

I wish you could have been there when it happened. Maybe you would have driven me to the ocean while I cried into my lap. I would have run to the water, and you would have stayed in the car because you hate the cold shock of waves against your ankles - but you would have never left me.

How could you have left me?

We filled a time capsule with our big dreams. Big plans. Our favorite gel pens. I added things I knew I couldn’t live without, kissing them softly and promising I would be back for them someday. We chose a spot we could see from the treehouse window. We buried it somewhere secret that only we would know.

Best friends. Forever.

Now, I have heard your last head-thrown-back laugh, clinked my glass against yours for the last time. We’ll never tear down a dark road, screaming the lyrics to the songs that felt so poetic when we were teenagers. We’ll never see a movie, or get our nails done, or cook something extravagant, barefoot in your kitchen.

We used to sip wine, sitting on counters, and feel whole.

My nickname will never cross your lips again.

I see the bottle you always bought for when I would come over, and my knees give out beneath me in my local grocery store.

What am I supposed to do? Who lets me cry in their front seat? You protected my secrets in pinky swear pages of your fuzzy diary, and my life was safe with you - the keeper of my story, the knower of my shame. Now you are gone, and I can’t remember. Oh my God, I can’t remember. I have torn trenches in the backyard until my hands are ragged and bleeding.

No one talks about the way your best friend can leave you and change who you are forever. She is not your husband. She didn’t die. She is not the death of a romance.

You, simply, grew apart.

God, the anger! I want to beat my fists until they’re bloody! I want to curse the sky! Where is the thing that took you away? I will pin it by the throat. Where is the thing that killed you?

But you’re alive. You are out there somewhere, scrolling idly on your phone. I am clinging to the shelf between Chiantis and Merlots, forcing air into my lungs.

“Friendship breakup” is a ridiculous way to say what happened to us.

I used to be so sure.

I have lost you, I have failed you. I move like a rabbit with a wolf prowling upwind, begging the wind to stay kind to me. Please, do you know what makes the breeze decide to change its path? Grief sniffs the air (I am too late) and snaps its head in my direction.

I have cost too much to love.

People told me that it was just “growing pains” and that friends simply “grow apart as you get older.” I want the grief to snip their tether, too. Would they say “growing pains” to someone whose spouse of twenty-five years left and never answered the phone again? Would they say the same thing to someone whose sister, in photos on her wall from the cradle until yesterday, disappeared without a goodbye?

A friendship dies, and nobody mourns. No one brings a casserole. No one sends a card. There is no time off of work. No one here is bereaved.

Some days I am walking home when it pierces me like a bullet. There is the sandwich shop we used to eat at when we felt like saying fuck it. Number seven, white bread, no mustard. It drops me to the ground. It’s rush hour in the city, and I am drowning from the inside out where another funeral has cut its path straight through my body. They step over me, gasping while my love runs out and pools around me in a dark halo. No one stops to apply pressure to my chest, or to say I know this feels like it will end you, but it won’t. Stay with me. Breathe. No one even looks down while I am dying on the sidewalk.

Because one day, in the middle of the week, you never answered the phone again. For twenty five years I was the person who answered your call every single time. Who showed up in the dark. Who bit the hands of men who hurt you. Until one day, in the middle of the week, I heard your voice for the last time.

I don’t remember what we said.

I am trying to grieve, but there is nowhere to go - no grave to sit beside and weep. Where should I bring the flowers? Where can I lay my pain down when it’s been too long without you, and it’s drowning me from the inside? No funeral, no headstone, no rectangle of grass one shade too bright. I cannot lay them at your feet, dangling in a pool of crystal water somewhere, kicking gently with soft pink polish. I cannot find the earth that holds you to lay this bouquet down. God knows, I can’t throw it away.

What would that say about me - so disloyal, to leave my love behind?

This pain is homeless, wandering, begging for someone to see it and learn its name. There is nowhere kind to rest its head. I cannot blame it for being so hungry that it gnaws me down to bone. It begs for mercy from a stranger and is shooed from benches like a nuisance. No one knows what to do when they find something so raw and pitiful, shivering where it fell at their doorstep.

If my sister had died, people would have held me together - given me endless grace while they told stories of how they survived the same thing - preparing me for my small deaths while I walk home on sidewalks.

She said I was her person. I would always be her person.

Someone, help me! She is dead!

Come here and look me in the eyes! Look at what love has cost me! How dare any of you say it is not the same killing - to be willfully, knowingly left?

How do we divide our families now? After an entire lifetime of growing up across two living rooms, two kitchens, two ways of serving dinner? Can I come to your mother’s funeral when she’s gone - the woman who taught me such gentle ways to love? Or will another ghost in the crowd be too much for you to bear?

I often think about your children I will never know. Would they have had your sister’s smile? How impossible to believe: I will never be allowed to love them. I can never see them grow. And what would you have thought about the person I’ll fall in love with? Would you say they have a good heart and an easy laugh?

God, if only I could change.

I cannot trust anyone who says they want to love me. If nobody gets in, then nobody ever leaves. Soon, they will stop trying - my friends who pry at plywood with their fingers - who face my mistrust with brave and hurting hearts. “What can I do to make you believe me? What can I do to prove that I am here to stay?”

If you can leave me, who can’t? If this could end, what couldn’t?

There is nothing they can say.

I hate you, I think. I hate you for this. Please, can you forgive me? Will I ever know the moment I became too hard to love?

All I know is knowing me was costing you your peace.

So, I hope. I hope we can meet in the future, when the past doesn’t feel so big. Maybe we’ll feel like we did when things were easy. Maybe we’ll laugh about the things that used to feel so damn important.

But, today, this is your eulogy, even though you haven’t died. (Haven’t you, though? And, really, haven’t I?) I pray that someday, after we’ve earned the scar tissue of time, you’ll barely flinch when you hear my name. I pray that this ragged place in my chest will be a memory that aches when it rains.

I know, I know. This has gone on too long. I’m sorry (so sorry). Okay.

To my person, my best friend forever, this is the last thing I will say:

Just in case you’re hurting, too, and the grief is flooding your room, you can bring my flowers to the seaside. Let the water rush your ankles, even though I know it’s cold. Let the waves force you to plant your feet - just this once, just for me. Close your eyes and think kindly of all the ways we had such a beautiful, brilliant life. Hold your ground, take a deep breath, and remind the changing sky!

“I am still here!”

Scream down the whipping wind! (I have loved you! God, I loved you!)

Unleash your heart!

“I am ALIVE!”

By Devrie Brynn Donalson

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If you know someone who has gone through a friendship breakup, send it their way. Feeling seen is half the battle.

P.S. I’m planning on doing a short series on Friendship Breakups, but I’ll be some of the first pieces I offer to paid subscribers only. This topic, this research, this writing - it’s a lot of work! I wish I could offer everything for free, but I appreciate everyone who sees something of value here.

Sending love.

- Devrie