When You Can't Keep Friends

And losing people feels inevitable

It is 3AM. As I sit here, alternating between comforting my ill grandmother and singing traditional African Methodist hymns, my mind drifts to the state of my own friendships. As I gather my grandmother’s pain, I am also compelled to confront a painful truth: I am always losing friends.

The final nail in the coffin that drove this truth home was a recent, unpleasant exchange with someone I once considered a sister and best friend. Our friendship, which began in our childhood, seemed unbreakable. Yet, after that interaction, I sensed a looming end. This was a few weeks before my birthday, and when my special day came and went in silence, I knew the end had arrived. People can say so much without uttering a word, and her silence spoke volumes about her feelings towards me.

I never would have predicted this. I had praised this friendship just a month prior, celebrating how it had supported me through many seasons of life without ever faltering. Now, the end of this relationship—like so many others—has left me feeling as though my life is inhospitable to meaningful connections. Alongside this feeling of isolation comes a profound sense of shame. How can someone who speaks so passionately about love and connections have such a dismal track record with relationships?

My life has always been centred on relationships. You do not have to scroll far enough down on my timelines to establish a consistent theme: love, friendship and connections. Maybe it is being an only child and always having felt a fundamental loneliness, and as such, fostering and creating my own community of cherished loves and friends to be rooted in has been my lifelong desire. However, I have painfully learned, that you do not root yourself in people.  People are like shifting sand—unpredictable and unreliable. To ground yourself in them is to risk instability.

Even as I write these words, I feel a pang of sadness. What do you mean we cannot root ourselves in each other? For as long as I have been me, connection has been my core ambition. Yet, relationships aren’t investment accounts where you receive back what you put in. They’re more like fragile constructs that can crumble despite your best efforts. People can leave and choose to not be connected with you despite everything that has been poured into nurturing the connection.

I was writing a note on my phone saying, “It feels like a hurricane has been sent into my life, deliberately uprooting every single one of my treasured connections.” At 25, I had five best friends; now, at 31, I’m down to one.

Coming to terms with the brevity of my connections has been a journey of its own. I’m left questioning how to stay open to connections when they seem so fleeting. How do you open yourself to people when there’s always the chance they might not be there tomorrow? How do you keep up your enthusiasm for connecting with others when it feels as if meeting and loving people comes with a hidden stopwatch, counting down the moments until they exit your life?

Adulthood doesn’t prepare you for this: while friendships require hard work, keeping your heart open amidst the uncertainty and loss is even harder. We are often encouraged to pour deeply into our connections, but we aren’t always equipped for the reality that some bonds are fleeting, their presence as temporary as they are profound.

But maybe, in the end, it’s not the number of friends we keep or the length of their stay that defines us, but our capacity to keep loving despite the inevitable goodbyes. It’s the courage to remain vulnerable, to let ourselves be touched by people who may not stay forever, and to keep moving forward with an open heart. That’s what carries great weight.

I am reminded of one of my all-time favourite poems by Sarah Kay and Phil Kaye,

Maybe love stays. Maybe love can’t. Maybe love shouldn’t. Love arrives exactly when love is supposed to. And love leaves exactly when love must. When love arrives, say, “Welcome. Make yourself comfortable.’ If love leaves, ask her to leave the door open behind her. Turn off the music, listen to the quiet. Whisper, ‘Thank you for stopping by””

As I walk back to my room, settling into the quiet of the night, my grandmother’s hymns still resonating tenderly in my spirit, I reflect, nonetheless, on how blessed I have been by love and friendship. Even amidst the pain of loss, there has always been magic in the brief yet intense connections that have graced my life. And like the hymns that continue to echo long after the singing stops, our connections, though temporary, leave a lasting imprint on our souls. I can’t help but now think that people were never meant for our keeps, what has always been for our keeping are the marks these connections leave on our souls.

Maybe heaven’s visits through the people we meet and love are not meant to be permanent, but their presence reminds us of what is possible, even if only for a moment. And perhaps, that fleeting beauty is where our path lies—cherishing the ethereal while it is here and bidding a graceful farewell when it leaves.

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