Remember pen pals? If you’ve been around long enough, you might have had one.
Growing up, having a pen pal was about the coolest thing ever. A letter would arrive in the mail from someone who lived somewhere else, and for however long you both stayed committed to writing, you had this little friendship unfolding on paper.
I had a pen pal. I couldn’t tell you her name today. I don’t remember where she lived, when we stopped writing or who stopped writing first. At some point in my early teens, the letters simply stopped coming. I am sure I was too busy being a teenager to even notice.
It was a slow drift. And eventually, there was almost no trace of it except for the envelopes left in my desk drawer, which at some point got discarded too. The memory of it is so vague today, it’s almost as though it didn’t exist.
I’d like to think friendship loss in the digital age could happen the same way.
It can’t.
The footprint feels inescapable.
The person may no longer be part of your life, but there they are. In your camera roll. Your old text messages. Your contacts. Your social media feed. Someone else’s social media feed. Tagged photographs. Group texts. And that damn memory feature on the iPhone that not only serves you a photo you didn’t ask for, but creates a whole video set to music that ironically plays like a funeral itself.
The friendship can end. The footprint doesn’t.
And sometimes that footprint hurts.
It’s one thing when it’s your own phone reminding you with a photo or calendar reminder of a birthday or anniversary. Suddenly the enemy is the object in your hand, the one you actually own and have some control over. It’s another when social media does the dirty work and you open Instagram only to find yourself looking at a life you used to be part of.
I’d like to offer some enlightened response to all of this. I don’t have one.
I think you’d have to walk around in a suit of armor for some of it not to affect you.
So what do you do?
We have all kinds of options now. Block. Delete. Unfollow. Unfriend. Mute. Leave the group chat. Remove the tag. Erase the text thread.
But there’s something about some of those actions that feels incredibly permanent to me. And perhaps more importantly, consequential.
Because friendship endings don’t necessarily stay endings.
Recently, a friend came back into my life after nearly ten years of not speaking. Whatever caused the demise of that friendship feels almost inconsequential to me today. Ten years changed the view. And I was grateful to receive the call.
But it made me wonder about all the definitive things we can do while standing in the middle of hurt.
Fear can make us behave disproportionately to a situation. So can anger. So can rejection. So can the pain of feeling left out. And the digital age gives us the ability to turn those feelings into actions almost instantaneously.
One click.
Done.
Except sometimes it isn’t.
Because people notice. Let’s be real. People track who’s following whom in the most bizarre ways. An unfollow can become a statement. A block can become evidence. Suddenly something deeply personal becomes visible to people who weren’t part of the friendship or the rift in the first place.
And then come the questions.
What happened?
Who did what?
Whose fault was it?
I’ve been on the receiving end of those questions, but I’ve also been the person wondering them. Someone tells me she had a falling out with a close friend and my brain gets curious. Somewhere underneath that curiosity is often judgment of one or both parties. Because someone has to be at fault, right? And sadly, people often make that decision without actually knowing the whole story.
Maybe that’s another reason friendship loss can feel so lonely. Acknowledging it can feel like inviting an investigation.
Someone once said to me, “I think the reason friendship loss is such a taboo topic is because if I share my experience, people will wonder what’s wrong with me that it occurred in the first place.”
That’s the saddest part. We hurt in silence.
And perhaps that’s where we owe ourselves both space and grace to not make a reactionary and immediate decision about what to do with every digital remnant of a relationship.
While that rabbit hole of deleting might feel cathartic in the moment, maybe the better question is:
How definitive do I want to make this while I’m still sitting in the hurt?
Don’t get me wrong. There are certainly relationships where blocking, deleting and creating a hard boundary are not only needed but necessary. But not every friendship ends that way. Some fade with time or distance. Some rupture in one grand moment. Others end without explanation. Some friendships probably should end. And, apparently, some find their way back ten years later.
We don’t always know which one we’re experiencing while we’re standing in the hurt of it. And often the only thing that brings clarity is time itself.
A phone call a decade later may arrive with regret if the camera roll is empty. I am grateful mine wasn’t. Honestly, it never occurred to me to delete the photos at the time.
Wouldn’t that be like deleting pieces of yourself too?
Maybe it’s less about erasing the footprint and more about learning how to live with it.
The photographs can hurt when they show up at the most unexpected moment. And the memories that come with them may have an equal bite if enough time hasn’t passed. But they may still be worth keeping. Their sting doesn’t mean the friendship wasn’t good when it existed.
Someone can no longer belong in your present without requiring you to delete them from your past.
They were part of your life. Maybe, in some form, they always will be.
Can we simply honor that? Can we be grateful for what was?
I don’t know that there is a perfect antidote for friendship loss in the digital age. I only know this. Making something disappear from a screen doesn’t make it disappear from you.
And perhaps it doesn’t need to.
Not every ending requires erasure.
And when her call arrived this week, I was glad my phone still knew who was calling.
I didn’t have to wonder.
I never deleted her.
Always EDITing,
Leslie
I would love to know if this resonated with you. Friendship loss is a part of the human experience. It happens in all forms, and it's not easy to navigate…especially alone.
P.S. I don't pretend to have this figured out. Friendship loss is complicated, and every ending is different. But I do think there are a few questions worth asking before making decisions from a place of hurt. If you're a paid subscriber, here are 5 guideposts that are worth keeping around.
This is so timely for me. I love how you shared this story. I have an essay I’ve been grappling with that centers around a lifelong friendship coming to an end. I’ve been struggling with how to share about it without bringing attention to it or calling it out explicitly. This is beautiful. And I realize maybe I don’t need to share it at all. 🖤
I’ve experienced this and it can be difficult at times. Wonderful share. Thank you.