Why I 'divorced' my childhood best friend
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Loading... - Carmina Santos
- 20 Oct 2020
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We hadn’t spoken to each other for six weeks, and our last text exchange had been a vicious one, but I still expected my best friend to come to my wedding.
Although our adult lives had taken different paths, our childhoods were so closely intertwined that she was still the first thing I thought about on the morning I got married. Many brides spend the minutes before they glide serenely down the aisle checking their make-up or adjusting their veil. I looked for my childhood confidante outside the church.
I didn’t see her because she didn't come. And although her absence had been at my request, I felt it like a blow.
That was five years ago. And today I know my teenage self would be devastated to learn that the person who was once my best friend doesn’t know I’ve had a daughter or that I’ve left our former stomping ground ofsouth London. In turn, I can only wonder if my one-time soulmate found the happiness that was eluding her when we last spoke.
Because if anyone should know if she’s happy, it’s me. We met when we were 12 and formed the kind of intense friendship that only a teenage girl would understand. For 15 years we shared everything from homework, sticky alcopops and sneaky cigarettes to our hopes and dreams. Our schooldays were littered with laughter and a coded vernacular that only we could understand. Her house became a second home, and her parents were the only adults aside from my own mum and dad who I felt truly comfortable around.
Polly Phillips on her wedding day
Yet even back then, when our greatest challenges consisted of GCSE coursework and A- level options, there was a nub of toxicity at the core of our friendship. Often she would buy dresses I already owned, while boys I expressed an interest in became targets of her teenage affection, too.
Our 20s were worse. While on the one hand, I supported her through her mother’s brush with breast cancer and she was my rock when my own mum died, it rankled when she tried to strike up friendships with my boyfriends behind my back.
I’m not proud of my possessive streak, but that combined with her wilful disregard of it meant we struggled with boundaries. If I stayed over with my boyfriend, she sometimes called early in the morning or late at night from a taxi on her way round. She became flightier as we got older, cancelling plans at the last minute or turning up late.
While her wedding no-show proved conclusively that our friendship was over, its demise had been a drawn-out process. Her refusal to attend my cowboys-and-cocktails-themed hen night because it wasn’t her ‘type of thing’ lit the fuse on the row that incinerated our friendship. It began to unravel and, battle-weary from years of petty skirmishes and resentments, we let it go.
I still miss her. Untold songs, films and childhood moments remind me of her, and I’m haunted by jokes only she would get, comments only she would make. I’m sad I’m no longer part of her family. But there's no going back – we wanted different things from a friendship that wasn’t strong enough to provide them. I still mourn it, though.
