Remember these? Picture: 10_things on Instagram Source: Instagram
BESTSELLING author Adele Parks thought she and her best friend of 20 years were inseparable - until she was dumped.
When my oldest friend, Karen, turned 40 last May, I found myself wondering how she'd celebrate her landmark birthday: a fun party, a cosy dinner or an indulgent holiday? I don't know. Nor do I know if she's married, where she lives or even if she has children, because we haven't spoken to one another for nine years.
Karen and I became close friends age 11; I remember it as though it was yesterday. We were on a bus, heading to France, for a school trip. Pretty, wise and witty, I loved Karen with an instinctive, instant intensity that only pre-teen girls can muster. Years passed, we shared the obsession of inappropriate crushes, the joy, uncertainty and mortification of first kisses, first loves and first break-ups. We giggled, grew and dreamed together, deliberated our futures and crammed for our exams.
I graduated a year before Karen and "killed time" by having a year out in Italy, waiting until we could move to London together, share a flat and look for work. It would be nice to say that in London we picked up our pre-college intimacy and once again became inseparable, but it turned out we had less in common than we used to.
Karen wanted to live south of the river, I preferred north; I secretly thought her new art-school friends were pretentious and she thought my new advertising friends were capitalist sell-outs. We shared a flat for a year, but chose to live separately after that. We still met up, though - in bars, restaurants, the cinema and theatre. But mostly we loved to hunker down over a cup of tea or a bottle of wine and natter.
Author Adele Parks. Picture: adeleparks.com Source: No Source
A decade flew by. We wrote to one another when I spent a couple of years in Botswana; I proudly watched Karen set up her own graphic design company; and she was an integral part of my wedding day. The year following my marriage was a hard one as I suffered bereavements among family and friends. Desolate with grief, I confided in Karen that I was seeing a counsellor. She encouraged me, and was never embarrassed or judgmental. The counselling led to my doing more writing and, ultimately, to a book deal for my debut novel Playing Away.
A CRUEL LETTER
Death made me value the people I did have even more, so I suggested to Karen that I take her to Paris to celebrate her 30th birthday. It was a fantastic trip and we giggled like schoolgirls, drank too much red wine and turned our hotel room into a makeshift spa.
So it was a devastating blow when, shortly after that trip, Karen wrote me a letter detailing why she didn't think we could be friends anymore. I shook as I read the letter; I felt as though someone had physically slapped me. I felt betrayed, hurt and - oddly - embarrassed.
It was a cruel letter. There were allegations of insensitivity, blame for miscommunication, charges of mean-spiritedness; a whole host of finger-pointing that always accompanies any break-up, some of which was totally absurd, some brutally accurate. It was the mix of truth and inaccuracy that destroyed me.
How was it possible that she had me so wrong and thought so badly of me, yet in other ways knew me so well? No-one other than Karen could have wounded me as deeply; 20 years of loyalty and history were detonated.
ASKING FOR ANSWERS
I called Karen as soon as I read the letter and asked why she couldn't have said these things to me. I'm a plain speaker and prefer things to be out in the open. I cried during that call, through shock or hurt. Karen said she'd wanted to be clear and careful; she'd spent hours drafting the letter.
Her biggest complaint was I'd "changed". I spent an hour explaining some of the miscommunications (I hadn't got drunk with her last time we were out because I was four weeks' pregnant, too early to tell a soul, not because I was being boring). "Oh," she said sorrowfully. Suddenly, I realised that there was no point in taking each accusation and addressing it, nor was there any point in hurling my own grievances at her. I realised we were breaking up; irrevocably, irretrievably.
TIME TO GRIEVE
I cried for days, grieving for her, for the loss of all the jokes and memories that only we shared. I thought about calling her and saying the whole episode was silly, suggesting we put it behind us, but I couldn't bring myself to do so. After what had happened, I just couldn't see a future for us.
It took me a long time to accept that while Karen's break-up was brutal, it was honest; we'd grown up, we'd grown apart. My grief counsellor had helped me accept that there's a time to be angry, to grieve and then to let go of the people who leave you through death. I applied the same reasoning to my relationship with Karen, even though it was hard accepting that we'd left one another's lives through choice. Initially I couldn't think about her. It was too painful. I threw the letter away; re-reading it was an act of masochism. I kept busy with my pregnancy and new career.
For a time, my broken friendship made me wary of completely trusting. I was cautious about confiding in other friends, how often I saw them and how much I revealed. Subsequently, I went through my divorce and then I realised I had a bunch of fabulous friends huddled closely around me. One of those friends I've known almost as long as I've known Karen. This is comforting because it shows some friendships do last the distance. By the time I finally fell in love again and remarried, I'd begun to have a much deeper understanding that there's a time and place for everything, including friendships, and even marriages.
I've learnt that even though some things are not eternal, they can still be astoundingly important. My relationship with Karen is a bit like a first love: bittersweet. When I think of her, I smile at the silly, youthful stuff we did. Yet, there's a shard of grief, a fragment of regret that we couldn't manage to grow up and old together.
Adele Parks' latest book. Picture: adeleparks.com Source: No Source
Read more about relationships at bodyandsoul.com.au. Adele Parks's latest novel is Love Lies (Penguin).
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