So, it's not hard to see why we became such good friends.  We are both compatibly neurodiverse, we have kids the same age, we share many of the same interests, and we're mostly politically aligned.

It started with our kids becoming friends and realizing we absolutely vibed with each other.  We shared so many similar interests, we could relate to each other's traumas.  It seemed like a perfect match and for a good number of years it was.  As the title of the blog gives it away, we aren't friends anymore.  It imploded and looking back, I think there was no real way to avoid that.

There's no villain in this story. No right, no wrong. Just what seems in hindsight to be an obvious core emotional incompatibility.  How did we miss this?  How did we manage to become so close despite this? Finally, what changed that it broke the status quo?  That's part of why I'm writing this.  To take a good, hard look at myself, hopefully to become more emotionally aware, to be a better friend to others I'll meet in my life, and to be more true to myself and my needs.

So, the cast of characters are:

Me, Berry

Maggie, my daughter

Tina, my now ex-best friend

Charlotte, her daughter

The end is still so very fresh and my emotions are complicated and messy.  I'm still deeply wounded and more than a bit angry by some of the things said.  I'm sad that I've lost her.  But I'm also relieved, which is something I feel at peace with and guilty about all at the same time.  I've spent the past year? two? feeling like I'm on a shifting sand dune in an earthquake.  The ground not feeling solid or steady beneath me.  I finally feel like I'm on solid ground again.  Stable, steady, secure.  It's not the ground I wanted to end up on, but it's where I landed and it's solid and I finally feel like I can relax.  And finally a small sliver of hope that somehow we could become friends again, not best friends but friends who hang out sometimes and do fun things together. Because those times?  They were amazing.

The odds of her coming across this is practically 0.  Further, even if she did find it and managed to recognize it as us I'm not hiding anything.  As I said, there are no villains.  Just two people with trauma.  I'd like to believe that she's processing this and growing from it as well.

The irony of this blog is not lost on me.  I can't tell my best friend all about this, so I'm writing it all here instead.  If it wasn't for her helping to lift me up and her endless support, I don't know that I'd ever have been strong enough to start working on my trauma and overcoming my own trauma responses which led me to being able to put my own emotional needs first.  Unfortunately, taking those steps is what revealed just how fundamentally emotionally incompatible we were.  Our friendship relied on each of us being conflict avoidant in different ways, our individual trauma responses covering up our conflicts, each a people pleaser in a slightly different way.  Each of us seemingly desperate to be close and be friends that we were putting up with a lot of unintentional harm from the other.  I do truly believe it was unintentional on both our parts.

I have no idea how much I'm actually going to write on here.  This may be the only post I make.  I hope that I write much, much more and slowly come to terms with my own emotional needs, protecting myself from being hurt like this again and especially how I can avoid hurting anyone else the way I managed to hurt her.

Some of these posts may end up far more anger fueled as I navigate the stages of grief over the loss of my friend, but hopefully I can keep my eye firmly on myself.  I can't change her.  I can't change what happened.  Neither of us can take back what was said.  I can only learn, grow, and try to do better next time.