The quiet grief of outgrowing friendships that used to feel like the whole world to you

Friendship loss is the grief we’ve built no language for. The cultural script for a broken romance is exhaustive: breakup albums, breakup movies, the understood etiquette of mutual friends choosing sides. The script for a friendship that quietly stops being what it was runs about three words long. You drifted apart. And then you’re supposed to keep walking.

But anyone who has lost a friendship of the whole-world variety knows this is a lie of omission. The grief is real. It just has nowhere to go.