We first crossed paths in a political science class during our first semester of Freshman year. I’m not sure what I noticed first, her effortless skater-girl style or her relaxed presence, a stark contrast to my visible “first-day-of-school-jitters.” It was a Monday morning, and she was clenching the same watered-down dining hall coffee I also happened to be holding in my hand, a necessary medicine to treat the 9 A.M. sleepees. She smiled at me quickly, eyes wide but mouth closed. I smiled back.

A couple weeks in, we started making small talk that quickly grew into larger conversations. “I’m Tara, by the way” I awkwardly told her one day, as if the opportunity for introductions had long passed. “Jenna,” she replied in a tone that could only be described as relief.

Soon enough we were waiting for each other after each lecture and eating breakfast together before class. We planned weeknight library study dates that turned out to be more distracting than productive.

Then it started to get serious. Our semi-regular hangouts turned into routines we built together: Walks around campus in the rain, frequenting our favorite cafes for overpriced cold brew coffees, and — in particular moments of darkness and desperation — getting late night meals at Applebees.

On paper, Jenna and I shouldn’t have been best friends. I was the outgoing one, chatty and loud, often to a fault. Jenna was a woman of few words, and when she did speak, it was in a soft, whispery tone, as if she was revealing a well-kept secret. But despite our differences, we found a way to let each other in.

Our connection only grew stronger when we revealed to one another our love of making music. My airy, untrained soprano was the perfect match for her Gibson acoustic. We’d stay up too late writing songs together in secret; we were too timid to share our ballads with the world. Or maybe it was just that we wanted these songs to ourselves, for if we shared them they would no longer be ours to hold onto. There was a certain vulnerability that came with opening these creative parts of ourselves; In doing so we gave something to each other.

We both aspired to be writers with the romantic naivety of two college English majors: I critiqued her screenplays, she edited my personal essays. At one point, we made a pact: If either of our careers failed, we’d drop everything and open a coffee shop together.

I loved Jenna. It was not a romantic, head-over-heels type of love. There was no physical attraction or lust. But it wasn’t just a friendship either. Jenna understood my quirks and anxieties in a way few friends ever had. And she embraced them.

It was one of the strongest relationships I had ever had with anyone.

Jenna and I graduated college with the intention of keeping in touch. At commencement, we had been advised that we were entering a new, exciting chapter of our lives — and so we did. I moved to Washington, D.C., after accepting an entry level content specialist position. Jenna moved to Los Angeles for a few months to work in film. We’d be living on opposite coasts, so we were forced to maintain a long-distance friendship. But I wasn’t worried.

***

A year later, Jenna moved back to her childhood home outside of New York City, and I decided to visit her for a night over Thanksgiving weekend. This would be the first time we’d see each other since graduation. I arrived at the Metro North station and waited impatiently on the platform overlooking muddy tracks and wet foliage. The cold, dark evening provided a necessary contrast to my overexcited temperament. Jenna picked me up around dinnertime in her black Jeep Cherokee, and just like old times we drove around until we got hungry. Yet something was missing. The words that once flowed naturally through our conversations, her hissy laugh that was just as endearing as it was annoying, all seemed to disappear. What was left was silence, and nothing to fill it but the sound of her vehicle’s indignant engine.

With other good friends, it was easier. We would go months without talking and when we finally saw each other, it was like time hadn’t passed. But with Jenna, things were different. What I thought would be a healthy, long-distance friendship became, well, a distant one.

The next year, Jenna moved into an overpriced studio in Murray Hill, Manhattan, and invited me to stay with her for a weekend. I hadn’t given up on our friendship quite yet. Like any relationship, I was determined to make it work, to rekindle the spark that had once ignited us. We went to dinner and shared updates about our lives. I told her about my new friends, my roommate, my upcoming travel plans. She told me she was settling into her new job, and had been hanging out with a lot of her high school friends again. She looked at her phone, then looked at me. “Kyle wants to go out with us later,” she said, looking straight into my eyes. “He’s excited to see you.”

I was expecting this. Kyle was Jenna’s boyfriend. They had started dating at the end of our Junior year of college, but never truly got over the honeymoon phase. When Kyle was in the room, all of Jenna’s attention shifted toward him. I liked Kyle, but his presence inevitably changed everything.

That night, the three of us sat in Jenna’s tiny studio apartment drinking cheap, store-bought beer and discussing our plans for the night. It was still early, and I wanted to make the most of my night in New York.

“I think Jake and Sarah are going to come, too,” Jenna told me.

“Cool,” I replied, although we both knew it wasn’t.

Jake and Sarah were Kyle’s friends, and now Jenna’s by association. But they weren’t my friends. Jenna and Kyle could have chosen to go out with Sarah and Jake any night, and they chose tonight, the one night I had come to visit. As we made our way to the Meatpacking District on a moderately crowded “L” train, I was quiet. The old Jenna would have read my abnormal behavior like a book. My Jenna, my best friend from college, would have known I grow silent when I’m too upset to speak up. But it wasn’t her in that oily subway train car. This Jenna was someone I barely recognized.

Somewhere in my silence, looking through these two affectionate couples, I realized that this was a double date — and I was just along for the ride. I came to the devastating conclusion that for Jenna, I was no longer enough. She wasn’t satisfied spending a night with me, and just me. She needed three other people to satisfy her social needs.

That night probably would have gone on about the same had I not been there.

On the bus back to D.C., I felt sick. And it wasn’t because of the bumper-to-bumper traffic on I-95, but that certainly didn’t help. It was an emotional nausea, triggered by the weekend’s events.

Still, I hadn’t given up. That’s the funny thing about love. More than any other feeling, love has a way of causing perfectly rational people to prioritize what they want to believe over what they know to be true. I knew my friendship with Jenna was over, but I tricked myself into thinking it wasn’t.

So when I visited my cousin in Queens a few months later, I texted Jenna and told her I’d wished to see her. She didn’t respond. I texted her again. I called her. I reached out more times than I would like to admit. Maybe she lost her phone, I thought, so I sent her a direct message on Facebook. Still nothing. Her silence, however, said more than words ever could. And it was exactly what I needed to move on.

I spent a lot of time thinking about Jenna. I wondered if I had been a good enough friend to her. I remembered the times we were together and questioned what I had done wrong. I wondered if I had been too clingy or emotional. Maybe I said something that rubbed her the wrong way. But overthinking the relationship and analyzing my behavior seemed counterproductive. I was looking for answers but I only ended up with more questions.

My college education taught me to always question everything. It challenged me to analyze, to speak up, to debate. But it did not teach me what to do with a broken heart. It didn’t teach me what I had to find out for myself, that some questions just don’t have answers. No experience up until this point had prepared me for the cruel reality of losing a friend.

I’m not sure when, I’m not sure how, but eventually Jenna and I broke things off. I stopped texting her. She didn’t wish me a happy birthday this year. It has been months since we last spoke. There was no grand finale to this friendship, no final argument that put one of us over the edge. Our relationship merely phased out, like a song that decrescendos during the last seconds, without offering a final beat to let you know it’s over.

My social media platforms tell me what Jenna won’t. That she recently took a trip to Ireland, the country we were supposed to visit together. That she watches every one of my Snapchat and Instagram stories, quietly keeping tabs on me. That she is still living her life, despite the fact that I am no longer in it.

Nobody tells you what it’s like to lose a best friend. There is no Spotify playlist of friendship breakup songs, no Nicholas Sparks-style movie, no shoulder to cry on as you stuff your face with pizza and ice cream.

We tend to reserve the feeling of heartbreak for the ending of a romantic relationship. But losing a friend can leave us just as devastated.

I would know: I often describe myself to others as being “chronically single.” Sure, it’s a line in my special brand of self-deprecating humor that I use in groups to get a few laughs. But this joke is rooted in something deeper. I’ve had a few relationships here and there, but nothing too serious and nothing long-term. And because of that, I always put my friendships first — they’re all I have. But looking back, I now realize that there was a point in our friendship when Jenna stopped putting me first. She prioritized her relationship with Kyle, even if it meant risking our friendship. I was never going to mean to her what she meant to me.

Breaking up with a best friend isn’t easy. I’m still recovering, and probably will be for a while. After all, Jenna helped shape me. She was present for some of the most important years in my life, the ones where I was still getting to know myself. She was there for me at a time when I needed her most.

Breaking up with Jenna was emotionally exhausting, but I’m glad it happened because it taught me a lesson in self-worth. After all, a friend who isn’t going to make sacrifices, who isn’t going to be there for you every step of the way, really isn’t a friend at all. Letting go of Jenna taught me to also let go of other friendships that I had held onto for far too long. It opened up space for me to invest more time and energy into forging and maintaining healthier relationships. And because of that, I’ve formed platonic ties that are tighter than ever.

These friends — the ones worth keeping — are the ones who are all in, the ones who will always make the time, the ones who will own up to their bullshit and call me out for mine. They are the friends that make me laugh about nothing, that make me feel challenged and safe and vulnerable all at once, the ones that will drop everything to be with me during my darkest moments and know I would do the same for them. Those are the friendships worth keeping. Those are the relationships worth fighting for.

Originally published on Medium.