Platonic Love and Heartbreak

I’ve never been in love. An odd way to preface a story about a broken heart, right? Maybe. But I also don’t think you need to have been in love to experience a broken heart. If you do need to have once been in love to understand what a broken heart feels like, then I must be severely misinterpreting the hollow, sunken feeling that comes at the realization of an ending relationship, or of the unfortunate truth that what you hoped would come from a relationship is not in fact, going to happen.

I have felt that empty, world-shattering, pang of a broken heart on a number of occasions, though I don’t believe that any one of those occasions had to do with a romantic relationship ending. I’ve never been in love, that remains accurate, but have I felt love? Oh, absolutely. I tend to love very hard, and sometimes in excess, if you believe such a thing exists – excessive love. I love my friends and family, and I fall in love with a new feature of this world at least once a day.

           Carrying around this nearly overflowing bucket of love every day, however, does come with some risks. People move fast. We walk past each other briskly, and occasionally we may bump into each other. And sometimes these little collisions lead to my bucket of love sloshing, the love threatening to spill, to pool at their feet, ready for us to slip and slide and fall in it.

           And so begins our story of an occasion where I let my bucket of love spill out, pour all over the sidewalk at the feet of someone who was then a stranger… and how that love was squeegeed up, and just when I thought it was going to be rung out, placed politely back into my bucket, it was tossed aside. It hurt, it sent me spiraling, but I pulled myself out of that emotional tornado, and managed to reclaim the love that was poached from me. This is the story of how a broken heart taught me to love even harder.

           I met my best friend in sixth grade. It was our last year in elementary school, and through a couple of mutual friends, we ended up in each other’s lives. We clicked really well, bonded over having crushes on boys, being part of the school orchestra, and managing to cut class by hiding in the orchestra room for hours. It was a good time, and thinking back to it gives me that happy, fluttery feeling of nostalgia in my chest. I can close my eyes and put myself right back in that elementary school, flitting about the hallways, becoming best friends. I began to allow my bucket of love to spill, to pour into this friendship.

           Our relationship grew stronger through the middle school years; inside jokes flourished, the ridiculous infatuations with our male classmates continued. Everything was good, for a while; I can’t imagine surviving middle school without her. If I had to pinpoint an exact moment at which the love I had poured into this relationship began to be taken advantage of, it would probably be at lunch one day in eight grade. I remember it vividly.

           “Hey,” she said, as we munched on nasty chicken patty sandwiches in the back of the cafeteria. “What would you think if I ditched you to go sit with the popular girls?”

           “Why did they ask you to sit with them?” I asked.

           She told me one of the girls had told her she could sit with them. Being the blunt, passive-aggressive 13-year-old, I was, I replied:

           “Do whatever you want. I’d be sad if you left to sit with the popular girls, but if that’s where your priorities lie, go for it.” Then, I dropped the conversation. If she wanted to ‘ditch’ our friend group for another, she was more than free to.

           Needless to say, she did not move to sit with the popular girls, though even if she had, I’m certain I would have tried to maintain our friendship, however in vain it was. From that moment on, my relationship with my friend felt less like two people enjoying each other’s company, and more like a competition for who was the better out of the two of us. Who was more popular, smarter, who did boys like more? I fed it, too, I competed with her despite myself, and obviously there was never a winner, because we were competing over petty things that didn’t actually matter.

           This relationship persisted through high school. However, now everything I said I wanted to do, became something she wanted to do. They say imitation is the highest form of flattery, but it didn’t feel flattering, it felt suffocating. I began to feel not like a support system or shoulder to cry on, but like I was becoming her brain. Like anything she needed to decide, she asked me for first.

           “You should do what feels right for you,” I would encourage.

           “But what would you do?” She’d reply.

           I entertained it. I entertained it for so long, until it became exhausting, at which point we were nearly seniors. I’d decided that this was just how our relationship would be from now on and came to terms with it. I spent senior year enjoying our last year in the same school, but at the same time, the competing continued, the dependence continued, my patience being drained slowly, but never fully. I continued to pour out that bucket of love, pouring it at her feet and allowing it to be sopped up, but maybe never really appreciated. I never poured that love out to her because I felt obligated to though, I poured it out because I truly wanted to. I loved her and out friendship, and in all honesty, I think I still do, and that is what makes me feel that nearly indescribable sense of gloom in my chest.

           Senior year wasn’t bad. It was my favorite year of high school, but it was also the year that began my realizing that I was in a toxic relationship. It wasn’t romantic, I was not in love, I loved my friend, but I was not in love with her in the way one is in love with her significant other. Yet here I was, having my heart broken as I came to the realization that if I wanted to remember the happiest moments of this relationship, if I didn’t want to look back on our relationship in frustration, the best thing to do would be to bring distance to our friendship.

           The last time I saw her in person, I cherished the time we spent together; then she said she needed to leave to pick up her brother from school, and something about the way she answered me, when I asked, “Are you gonna come back after?”, something clicked to let me know that our relationship had changed.

           “Probably not,” She answered. “I have a lot of cleaning to do.”

           “Oh. Okay.” I replied. I walked with her to the door of our friend’s house, saying goodbye, letting her know I love her and would miss her once we returned to school.

           “I’ll miss ya too,” she said.

           We saw each other briefly one final time after that, before we did go back to college. We barely spoke then, and it hit me that I didn’t even know what to talk to her about. It all flooded to me then, that for the last several months, after her promises – those which I now realized were empty – of keeping in touch while we were away at school, of never losing touch, that she had barely made an effort to maintain our friendship.

           I could look back at texts from those months, and see that the only time she reached out, immediately after asking how I was, after my response of, “I’ve been okay,” or “Pretty okay, stressed, miss you,” or what have you, immediately, the topic of conversation shifted to something about herself. Of course, I care. Of course, I wanted to know what was going on with her. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was the imbalance of effort being made from each party.  

           I couldn’t stand by and consciously allow my best intentions, to let all the love I had poured into seven years of friendship to be squandered, so it became necessary that I break my heart to allow it to heal. What needed to happen, was for me to take my empty bucket, and walk away. I knew it needed to happen, and it did. It has been happening, without my active involvement.

           As I write this, I feel hollow, I feel like I am finally letting go of a piece of me, a piece of me that exists because of the love I have for my friend. She has become a part of who I am, and shaped so much of my life in such a positive way; yet I know that sometimes good things must come to an end.

           So, what unexpected result came about after all of this? What happened when I finally picked up that empty bucket?

           I’m still working through it, to be honest. I am beginning to see an unexpected silver lining to all of this, though. It’s hard, right now, to look at distancing myself from someone I considered my other half for so long, as anything but painful… but, I have learned something from all of this.

           I have not learned to be careful where I spill my bucket. No, while I love a good cliché, that is not what this experience has taught me. I still spill love from my love bucket unrelentingly to anyone who will let me, but I’ve learned to know when to stop pouring out love, to know I’m not pouring it onto relationships that need to be showered in love.

           This ability to pour love onto relationships from the start but know when it’s necessary to stop has allowed me to build new, strong friendships and relationships which I value dearly. This experience of allowing myself to slowly drift apart from a toxic friendship led me to become closer with some of my other friends. I’d been in this bubble of thinking my friend and I were a package deal; anything she did, I did, and we were this odd two-person clique. Once I began to split away from her, I started to spend more time with some other friends. These friends showed me a reciprocation of the love I show them… it’s refreshing.

           These new friendships have held strong through our first semester apart at different schools, while me and my former best friend’s relationship has slowly but surely become nothing more than a superficial friendship. We rarely talk, and it still hurts, but I know it is for the best, and that the end of one relationship does not mean I will never feel, give, or receive love again.