When you reflect on a lost friendship, do you question your perception of that relationship? Did you actually ever know that person? Did you just settle for less, & then tell yourself that things were okay? Sometimes, when I think back to a number of failed friendships, I can feel self-conscious about my lack of self-esteem in youth.

For example, before I knew what true friendship was, as in a genuine best friend who’d be there for you no matter what, I had my share of what my mother termed “fair-weather friends.” She’d grow frustrated with me, listening to me when I was a teen on the phone, piping up in the background, trying to tell me what to say to stand up for myself, mouthing or harsh-whispering words. We’d have arguments after those calls, mainly with my mother trying to shake into feeling my self-worth, helping me to know what I could ask for from a real friend. I’d become so angry, not thinking my mother understood me at all. Did she just never want me to have friends? Did she just want to keep me home with her? I could feel lonely & suffocated enough to grasp at anything to distract myself, anything to get out.

Of course, in retrospect, I can see how my mother truly tried to help me. I can hear her words ringing in my ears, & I feel ashamed for letting my own fears drown out her truth, preferring to see her as an antagonist rather than a support for me. Truth can be incredibly painful to hear. And I didn’t like feeling weak or rejected. To that point, I remember that one summer my mother wanted me to feel like I had more friends, so she bought postcards from nearby tourist attractions & forged (rather poorly, since I could still make out remnants of her printing style) fake missives from so-called “friends” from home while I was at camp in Vermont. She’d signed the postcards, “Your friends.” A sweet gesture, certainly.

But there was something that made me feel even more pathetic that I needed my mother to do that. Was I really that alone & unpopular? I felt so much worse after what she had (in all good intention) done.

There’s been this balancing act between being alone & isolating myself because I haven’t always trusted people in friendship, which goes back to childhood & the roots of anxiety which aren’t even necessarily clear to myself. The solitude has been necessary element for existence, a critical component of who I am. But when I spend too much time alone, then pleasant solitude can veer towards feelings of neglect & abandonment–or, at least, the fear of those things.

As a young adult in college, I found best friends who today remain as sisters to me even after 24 years. They continue to be my best friends despite distance & time & busy lives, careers, & family obligations. Just knowing they are there, with a funny text or encouraging word, means the world to me. And, of course, my closest, most trusted family provides me with feelings of roots & permanence. Yet, I think about those intense yet fleeting, flash-in-the-pan friendships, the ones when people sweep into your life, shaking everything up just to leave as swiftly. Who were they? Who are they? Did I even know?

As is often the case, I don’t have the answers. I’d like to think they were real, that those friendships meant something regardless of how long they lasted. Maybe they were catalysts for my emotional self-development? Perhaps they were agents of loss, aimed to teach me about life’s hardships & how to cope in a healthy way? I’d prefer to not hang onto anything negative from the endings of those relationships, but instead engage in radical acceptance, no matter how sad the losses on the onset. As an INFJ, there are some relationships & friendships I’m perfectly fine with terminating. It’s called the “door slam.” That moment when an INFJ personality realizes that another person truly doesn’t care, will carelessly hurt you over & over, engages in emotional manipulation, & countless other toxicities poisoning your happiness. The door slam is quite easy then.

Yet, it’s the unexpected breaking of promises. The underlying disbelief of abandonment & rejection that causes all of your insecurities to resurface once more. That’s when reflection helps someone like me to process what hurt is coming back to haunt me, things I’ve not yet resolved or placed to rest. More work to be done, for certain, plumbing the depths of memory & the past.