You learn the most from the relationships that are the most difficult because they make you question and think and work. If you are friends with somebody you’ve known since 9th grade, does that mean your relationship will remain in that juvenile state even when you’re adults? Are people and the bonds that connect them able to evolve at the same rate and in the same way? So you grow, but not together. Your views of reality become more and more incongruent until the only way for one to exist is for the other to be extinguished.

It feels at once shocking and yet not so improbable, as if you expected this all along, because twelve years is a long time to get to know someone, to know what they believe in and where they will not budge. Especially when this childhood friendship was founded upon a clash in attitudes and personalities, meant to be a coupling of odd individuals, it’s ironic to find over a decade later that the differences that brought you together are now driving you apart.