I’m writing this because I feel heartbroken. I just cut off one of my long-term best friends, and even though it had to be done, I still feel terrible about it.
We met as kids at Norwood Elementary, right off 19th Street and 14th Court in Miami Gardens. From the beginning, there was this magnetic pull between us, even though we couldn’t have been more different.
I was the quirky, weird one, always a little in my own world. She was cool, hip, effortlessly social. Somehow, it worked. We were inseparable.
Then a year later, her oldest sister suddenly sent her back to Honduras to live with her parents. I was devasted.
She didn’t really have anyone to take care of her in the States anymore, and my mom even offered to adopt her since we were moving into a bigger home in Miramar.
It didn’t work out. Life moved on, and a lot of years passed. We stayed loosely connected through social media, checking in here and there, updating each other on life.
When she finally moved back to the States in 2005, she landed in Coral Springs. That still felt impossibly far when you’re in high school, don’t have a car, and have strict, helicopter parents. We stayed loosely connected via social media as per usual, but it still wasn’t the same.
Everything changed in 2011 when she moved back in with her oldest sister in Miami Gardens.
I was ecstatic and just got my first car. Around the same time, my other longtime best friend had just left for the Navy, and it felt like the universe was handing me something familiar right when I needed it most.
The timing felt perfect. I officially got one of my best friends back, and we picked up where we left off.
We did everything together. We lived it up. From the outside, it looked like one of those lifelong friendships people admire, the kind that survives distance, time, and change.
Things were genuinely great. Not just for a few months, but for years. But things started to change after a while. An underlying tension began to surface, something I couldn’t quite put into words back then.
I wore rose-tinted glasses for years, telling myself that loyalty meant tolerating certain behavior.
It seemed to start when I brought my other friends around her. She never liked them and would often talk bad about them afterward, which put me in an uncomfortable position more times than I can count. I really hated it.
As time went on, she began gossiping more, often about her own friends and women she knew, and encouraged me to do the same. I went along with the gossip, but it never felt natural or comfortable to me, which is something I ignored at the time. and I take complete responsibility for that.
Alcohol dulled my judgment, but the truth is I ignored my instincts. I’d redirect the conversation towards talking about boys, which was my favorite subject anyways while she continued gossiping about her own friends, something I now recognize as a clear red flag.
Boundaries were often blurred. She expressed interest in one of my romantic partners from the past. She made confessions that crossed lines she knew existed, but I shrug it off and told her she could go for it. I made it seem like I didn’t care, but I did.
She often tried to pull me towards things that didn’t align with my values, while I found myself playing the role of the steady one, the grounding presence.
There were also moments that felt quietly controlling. If we were getting ready to go out and she didn’t feel like she looked great, but I did, we would suddenly stay in.
I’d end up wasting my time, even though I was so excited to go out. At the time, I didn’t question it, but looking back, it feels like another place where my experience was made smaller to accommodate her insecurity.
She also started to hurt my feelings which was new for me, I’ve never had a friend that would make comments that were framed as jokes, but landed as subtle insults.
I would laugh along in those moments, only to feel a quiet heaviness afterward, the kind you can’t immediately explain but your body remembers.
Laughing something off doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt.
Eventually, I had enough. I tried to step away more than once over the years. I didn’t always handle it perfectly, I would ghost her because I didn’t have the heart, or the language, to explain how much of a crappy friend she has been to me.
Each time I ghosted her, I felt lighter. And each time, she found her way back into my life, never asking why I had disappeared in the first place. I was familiar to her, and that seemed to be enough. She didn’t want to let me go, until she had to.
Friendships should not be exempt from the same standards we hold in romantic relationships. Respect matters. Boundaries matter. How someone makes you feel in your body matters.
Ending this friendship was painful, and I still carry some sadness about it.
I will always love her, and I still check up on her from a distance. But that’s all it will ever be. I wish I could have told her how I truly felt, explained everything with clarity and grace.
The truth is, I didn’t have the language then, and maybe she didn’t have the capacity to hear it, probably would gotten defensive, and all worked up. I really don’t know how to navigate that kind of reaction so I chose distance.
Sometimes closure doesn’t come from a conversation, it comes from finally choosing peace.
Honestly, Vanessa 