Why I Broke It Off Like That
By: Rashifa Aljunied
Tags: Breakups, Best Friend, Depression, Mental Health, Friendship

Don’t worry, the memories of Disneyland will always stay with me forever.

You must have felt so baffled at the time. We were living in different states. I was suddenly not responding to your text messages.

From texting you daily, calling each other twice a week, and then absolutely nothing at all. I become distant with you. That was the beginning of an end.

Many times in the relationship, it was a one sided relationship. And it was a painful one too. I was always opening up the conversation. The one calling first. You said it was because I had the most interesting days. That made me feel dreadful and awful. I don’t know why. Like you were trying to insinuate something. I guess you could blame it on the anxiety at the time.

I called you about finally meeting a psychiatrist after having anxiety issues for years and you knew about these issues. And when I told you, you were shocked, your voice on the phone gave a tone that I was not expecting from a best friend of 3 years. I needed help.

But I guess you didn’t see that way. Anxiety sort of became my personality. A lot of people saw it that way too. So I came to a conclusion as to maybe that was why you were shocked when I told you about receiving medical help.

I can’t deny that I didn’t play a part in this broken relationship. I was truly a mess. I was having trials with anxiety medications and almost nothing was working for me. It took almost six months to finally find a concoction that suited me. Not replying to text messages, never on my social media. But thankfully, I had amazing friends who I call my true friends now who brought me food, called me daily and brought me out to my favourite activities which were window shopping, cafe hopping and just walking around.

We’ve been best friends since we were in highschool. We went to Japan together. Spent the whole day on the happiest place on Earth, Disneyland. Some days we would spend more than ten hours in school and I wouldn’t trade anything in the world for those memories.

So, what went wrong? To be honest, we grew up. You see, if there is one thing that you can’t be certain about, it’s the future. I never expected to be the person I am today. I didn’t expect to go to therapy at 20. Be best friends with university coursemates and the casual friends that I had in school. I grew up. We grew up. And it’s not that we became whole different people. We just have different priorities now. And that’s not bad.

My adulthood has made me fearless of letting go. Letting go of the things that could potentially detroriate my mental health and also negatively affect the people around me. But with you, I don’t want to let our memories go. I want to let you go in a way because I don’t want to keep holding myself back from making new friends. I don’t want to be traumatized making new friends just because of one relationship.

You gave me a blessed learning and incredibly meaningful experience for me, and that doesn’t make you a bad person, I promise. You gave me so many memories that I will cherish forever. I will always have a piece of you in my heart. I only hope for the best for you. Your sense of service has always been something I admire, so I hope you will always preserve even with the hurdles right in front of you.