When Our First Heartbreak Wasn’t a Boy

It Was Losing a Best Friend

No one warns you that your first real heartbreak might not come from a boy. For so many girls, it comes from losing a best friend—the kind of friendship that feels more like a shared identity than just someone you hang out with. The kind where you’re basically twins, finishing each other’s sentences, telling each other everything, and building a whole world that exists only between the two of you.

And when that kind of friendship falls apart, it doesn’t just hurt.
It shatters something inside you that you didn’t even realize was fragile.

I once had a friend where the closeness felt almost unreal. We were going through similar things, growing in the same direction, and understood each other instantly. It was the kind of connection where you could talk about anything—things you’d never even consider sharing with a boy. There’s a level of emotional honesty in girl friendships that feels sacred. You build versions of yourselves together. You bring out parts of each other you didn’t know existed.

So losing a friendship like that isn’t just losing a person.
It’s losing the self that existed beside them.

And when things finally fell apart, it happened fast—almost violently fast. A month of tension, overwhelm, immaturity, and too many unspoken emotions. We were both going through a lot. We were both at fault. But at the time, all I could feel was the storm:

Abandonment.
Anger.
Confusion.
The instinct to blame her because blaming myself felt impossible.

It wasn’t until a month later—when everything was quiet—that I sat with the wreckage and realized I had my own part in the ending.

People underestimate how painful girl friendships can be. They treat them like something casual, replaceable. But they’re not. They’re intimate in a way romantic relationships rarely start out being. You grow together emotionally. You trade secrets, fears, hopes. You become witnesses to each other’s lives.

When a romantic relationship ends, there’s a script:
cry, vent, listen to sad songs, heal, eventually move on.

But when a friendship ends?
There’s silence.
No rules.
No rituals.
No closure.

You’re stuck grieving someone who’s still walking around the world as if you never existed.

That loneliness hits a different part of the heart.

Losing multiple friendships over the years—sometimes because of growing apart, sometimes because of jealousy, miscommunication, or life shifting—leaves a mark. Each one taught me something different, but every friendship ending had its own emotional season:

Some hurt immediately.
Some hurt slowly, over months.
Some felt like guilt.
Some felt like betrayal.
Some felt like a death.

Across all of them, though, I grew. I learned how to communicate better. How to be present without losing myself. How to care without overextending. How not to shape my identity around someone else. How to have boundaries. How to stop people-pleasing. How to show up for others without disappearing inside them.

But growth doesn’t mean the hurt disappears.
It just means you understand it better.

If I’m being honest, I’m scared of both sides of friendship now.

I’m scared of being hurt again.
And I’m scared of hurting someone else.

Both feel equally heavy. Because once you’ve lived through the collapse of a friendship that used to feel like home, you start bracing for loss—even in places that seem safe.

So yes, I’m more mature now.
More aligned with myself.
More aware of what I will and won’t accept.
More intentional with boundaries.

But I’m also a little emotionally closed off. Not because I don’t want connection—but because I’ve learned how vulnerable it is. And my upbringing, my past, the trust wounds I carry… they’ve built a quiet caution into the way I approach any new relationship.

The truth is, girl friendships shape us long before any boy ever does. They teach us how to love, how to communicate, how to fight, how to forgive, and how to lose. They crack us open and force us to rebuild ourselves piece by piece.

And even though losing them hurts in a way that feels unforgettable, the lessons they leave behind are often the ones that steer us into adulthood.

If anything, the heartbreak proves one thing:

You loved deeply.
You grew deeply.
And you’re still becoming someone worth knowing—even if some people couldn’t stay long enough to see the full story.

With Love

-Sabrin<3