When a Friend Breaks Your Heart

We need to talk more about female friendship breakups

The first time I experienced a friend breakup, I was 13 years old, finishing up a year of seventh-grade Hell.

I had gone to the spot where my best friend and I met each morning when we arrived school. We had been elementary school besties who stuck close together once we entered an overwhelming and sprawling junior high school.

But she wasn’t there.

This had never happened before.

I wandered the halls, confused, only to find her standing with a girl she had recently befriended and had made a third wheel to what had once been our cozy duo. I don’t remember the exact words she spoke when I approached her, but I’ll never forget the feeling of being told I was being replaced by the vastly cooler girl at her side.

I can still feel the shame burning on my cheeks, the choked-back tears stinging my eyes, and the desperate urge to throw up. I quickly turned away and put as much distance between us as I could so that she couldn’t see how much she had hurt me.

This memory came flooding back to me last week when I was again on the receiving end of a devastating friendship breakup that I absolutely did not see coming.

This time, however, I didn’t even attempt to hold back my tears or pretend that I wasn’t angry and heartbroken. Even a few years ago, I would have done my best to play it cool, but I’m at a stage of my life where I feel no shame for my capacity to care deeply about the people in my life.

So, if you were at Tatte on 14th Street last week and saw a blondish woman crying in her cappuccino, that was me.