Lost my best friend six months ago
Everyone focuses on partners and parents and children when they talk about grief. But losing a best friend is its own kind of devastating. He was the person I told everything to. Now there's nobody who remembers things the way he did and that specific loneliness is hard to explain.
Comments (12)
jamie, thank you for sharing this here. losing a best friend is one of those losses that the world doesn't always make room for, and that can make it so much lonelier than it already is. six months is still so raw. you don't have to have this figured out. you don't have to be anywhere other than exactly where you are right now
thank you helen. the loneliness is the worst part honestly. i have other friends but none of them knew him the way i did so i can't really talk about it with them
that's such a painful kind of isolation – being surrounded by people but having no one to really grieve with. can i gently say something? you're doing it right now, here. talking about him. sharing how it feels. that's grief work, even if it doesn't look like what you expected. and you can keep doing it here as much as you need to
jamie, the specific loneliness you're describing – where you have people around but no one who really gets it – that's one of the cruelest parts of grief. i felt that too. still do sometimes. this group helps though. you're not alone in this even when it feels like you are
it does help. genuinely. even just knowing people here understand
i hear you jamie. it's a different kind of lonely. like the one person who would understand what you're feeling is the person you lost
jamie, what you're going through is what researchers call disenfranchised grief – it's grief that society doesn't fully recognise or give space for. friend loss falls into that category more often than it should. the bond was real, the loss is real, and the grief deserves to be taken seriously. i'm really glad you brought it here
didn't know there was a name for it. but yeah that's exactly what it feels like. like no one else thinks it counts
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