What Reality TV Taught Me About Ending a Friendship

I’m coming to terms with the fact that—whether it ends in an unfollow or in a blow-up bash in a house in Malibu—sometimes the kindest thing we can give one another is a goodbye.

Before our friendship fell apart, Pat and I found each other on Tumblr, commiserating over our love of the show Glee. On the day that we became friends, I had likely finished a day of classes at my SUNY college and popped onto Tumblr before going to dinner with my friends. I always checked the website during those hours, scrolling and reblogging while I waited for someone to get ready or to get out of class.

My first conversation with Pat probably happened in the comment sections of posts and moved over to messages. We wanted to keep talking but didn’t want to clog up other people’s newsfeeds. We had a shared love of the relationships on Glee—Kurt and Mercedes’ friendship, Sam and Mercedes’ romance. Pat and I appreciated their brand of corny, sappy kinship, but our own relationship outlasted the show.

Because of the way our relationship began, I never felt like I had to hide parts of myself to be accepted by Pat. I could be the sap who loved romantic comedies and music, the sad girl who questioned her worth, and the girl with a little bit of bite who was fiercely protective of the things and the people she cared about. I was the person who often overshared and treated Tumblr as a diary of sorts, but I also felt so certain of the things that I enjoyed in an unapologetic way. I was able to share that with friends like Pat without second guessing the choice to do so.

The true magic of the beginning of our friendship was that, with Pat, I could be who I was without apology and be welcomed with open arms. Back then, I wasn’t so forthcoming with my feelings in real life the way I was on Tumblr because I was depressed. I hated myself so much that I didn’t want to feel like I was burdening the people in real life with my feelings.

The friendship began in a blur, where you just woke up one day and realized you were friends and that was that. We were friends online, sure, but I’ve always believed online friendships matter just as much as the ones formed in person. When Tumblr was at its peak, so was our friendship. Eventually, when Tumblr was bought out, the site changed enough that I didn’t visit it as frequently.

My insecurities made me fearful of the ends of relationships because I used to always believe I was worth leaving.

But Pat and I joined Twitter and let our friendship meet us there. Then we carried it over to WhatsApp, where our relationship started to crumble. There were small cracks at first, jabs at choices in favorite band members turned to jabs at personally held beliefs. Pat and I went from disagreeing about things that shouldn’t have mattered to things that did. Our arguments became about what would hurt the other the most.

This January, Pat and I had a friend breakup. She ended it. I was livid. I was beside myself with anger—not because we had fought the days before, or had a big blow out of words we couldn’t take back, but because it happened all at once. She unfriended me across all social media platforms. I only realized she had removed me from her life when I went to send her a writing opportunity and saw that she was no longer following me on Twitter.

We had been friends for nine years. Nine years and it was over in minutes like it had never happened at all. I had been through a friendship break up once before. They were not exactly the same, but I saw the other side of my hurt, loss, anger, and fear already; I could and would again. This, of course, has not made saying goodbye to Pat and her friendship easier. It has instead, allowed me to understand myself and my first friendship break up with clearer eyes.

*

My first friendship breakup was with a person we’ll call Mandy.

She and I experienced a lot of firsts together as college roommates. We shared the first time of making connections with people we didn’t grow up knowing. We shared fears, hopes, dreams, and longing for a knowledge of what was coming next. She was there the first time I was ever drunk, and the day I found out my grandmother died.

We bonded quickly—two momma’s girls now making sense of being apart from our mothers for an extended amount of time. Mandy introduced me to musical artists I still love today. Like with Pat, we shared a love of television; watching shows together were our roommate bonding experiences. But unlike with Pat, we had the advantage of proximity as roommates; we played cards, went on trips to the beach, chair-danced at house parties. We leaned on each other to survive the new world we were in together.

I was a scared young girl who thought she was an adult who knew everything I needed to. She put up with my mood swings, worry, and insecurities. When it was great, it was great. But when it wasn’t, well—I never knew where to place my emotions, so they often found a home in her, good or bad.

A month after freshman year ended, I knew our friendship was over. We were both back in our separate home cities and gearing up for summer when she told me that she wanted to go to school closer to her mother. I did not take that well. I have never been a fan of change and the idea of starting over with a new friend felt unfair to me. I was fearful that this new roommate wouldn’t like me because I didn’t even like me. My insecurities made me fearful of the ends of relationships because I used to always believe I was worth leaving.

My fear led me to lash out at Mandy for leaving me. I texted her that her decision to leave was as much about me as anything else. I told her that she was selfish and inconsiderate—even though it was my fear and anxiety talking—for getting close to me, only to just up and leave without finishing out her college career with me. In hindsight, I understand that I was the one being selfish and inconsiderate.

When my friendship with Mandy ended, I was heartbroken for a full year. We said our final goodbyes to each other over Facebook messages. I apologized when she told me that it was best if we parted ways. Afterwards, I couldn’t watch Dexter for a year because she had introduced me to it. Songs that felt like ours were a no-go. Listening to them hurt too much.

I cried all the time. I begged her for forgiveness via text messages because I hoped she’d change her mind. I hadn’t yet learned that forgiveness was not owed to me just because I longed for it. What I wish I knew then was that the most important thing to give Mandy was the space from me that she deserves.

I realize now that the heartbreak I felt after Mandy and I broke up wasn’t the same heartbreak I faced with Pat. This was heartbreak in kind with unrequited love. I didn’t know then that I had fallen in love with Mandy, as I didn’t understand my queerness until years later. But knowing now has allowed me to let go of the embarrassment I held for being so sad about our ending for many years after.

But the knowing doesn’t make it hurt any less.

*

After my friendship breakup with Pat, I decided to rewatch The Hills. It’s a reality TV show about the lives of rich white kids in California, and all their relationships, dramatic episodes, and betrayals. It was a spinoff of another reality TV show called Laguna Beach, which was about much of the same. The Hills followed the post-high school life of Lauren Conrad—who had previously been on Laguna Beach—as she went out into the world to figure out her place within it.

I found comfort in watching Lauren Conrad’s friendship with Heidi Montag fall apart after my friendship with Pat did. Thank goodness, I thought. I’m not the only one who’s ever experienced the loss of a friendship that I thought would last.

They had an explosive fight before Heidi moved out of the apartment they shared about Heidi’s boyfriend Spencer and the idea that he was a “sucky person.” Throughout the season, they ran into each other in places and at events around town—likely orchestrated by the producers of the show to keep the drama going. I found catharsis in their beginning, middle, and end of it all.

Unlike me and Pat, Lauren and Heidi had a clean break. My friendship with Pat dissolved over months and awkward conversations and unfollows on social media. Lauren’s and Heidi’s fights were cut and dry, packaged week-to-week to frame a clear hero and an even clearer villain. When it was over, the viewer always knew who to root for—Lauren.

At the end of my own friendships, there were no simple solutions. Much like in a divorce, the division of our mutual friends was messy too. With me and Pat, with me and Mandy, I had to unravel the life that had become so interwoven with theirs over the course of years. As I watched Lauren and Heidi breakup on screen, I watched this same fracture split through their circle as well. This, I understood too well.

When I watched The Hills the first time as a teenager, the friendship breakup of Lauren and Heidi was soul-crushing. I was desperate for a happy ending and petrified of change—even as the drama happened to people I didn’t know. As I rewatched after my own friendship breakup, I can see more clearly what I couldn’t see then: Lauren and Heidi were wise not to fight for what was no longer working. They knew when to let go. I needed to do the same.

I loved Pat like you do friends who seem to “get” you when the world does not. We grow and change as people. Not everyone is meant to come with us as we do. Rewatching the show and the break up, I found myself wishing things were different with Pat. A small part of me thought they would be for the week after we said goodbye. And for that week, I waited for a text to call the whole thing off that never came.

All of my friendships, both past and present, have value, even if that means I am left to use the past tense.

I took sides in the Lauren-Heidi feud back then, and I stand by that same decision today. (I chose Lauren.) That clear-cut winner and loser made sense for me when I was a teenager. When the show first aired, I had never lost a friend, never said goodbye to someone I thought would be in my life forever, never knew the pain of letting go nor how to parcel through the differences between the level of intensity behind friend breakups. I didn’t know then how many times I’d need to write through the heartbreak of losing a friend before I’d finally be ready to move forward.

In my re-watch of The Hills, I watched that breakup with the knowledge that it is okay to be vulnerable enough to mourn something that is no more, to be open to allowing the possibility of losing someone again. Heidi now says that she and Lauren were never friends in the first place. It was all an act; the show was her job. But real or fake, one thing remains as true then as it does now: watching them on-screen mirrors my own experience.

See, the difference between real life and reality TV is in the simplicity of the characters. I wasn’t the hero and Pat wasn’t the villain, or vice versa. We are just two people who don’t get to be in each other’s lives anymore.

Simply: Friendships end. Endings are never as cut and dry as we sometimes make them out to be. I say this not to absolve myself of my wrongdoings within each former friendship, but to allow myself the room to be human. I do not want to carry the weight of every goodbye as though it is stitched in the lining of the clothes I wear every day.

Change happens. Endings are inevitable. But I cannot let these facts keep me from being brave enough to love, care, and feel in the first place. Knowing that something might end does not mean something does not hold value. All of my friendships, both past and present, have value, even if that means I am left to use the past tense. I am allowing myself to hold on to the good times while also mourning their loss.

For me and Pat, though our friendship ended in a shift of opinion of each other, I am still grieving what we had. Sometimes, I still want to text her things I think she’d find funny, our inside jokes, a great song, a meme, the good memories of our friendship.

But I’m coming to terms with the fact that—whether it ends in an unfollow or in a blow-up bash in a house in Malibu—sometimes the kindest thing we can give one another is a goodbye.