Always thought my closest mates over work friends every time. Until a few years back when who I'd say was my best mate - went to footy, gigs, even a few weekends away on the beer to walk, talk and drink - said he's done being mates and don't contact him again. Known him since school, and our circle of mates was the kind where if someone called you stranded from Cumbria on a Thursday night, you'd get in the car and pick them up.
Have no real idea who or what I or anyone had done to offend him, tried a few times to contact him and even went round to his house with a birthday gift and card from me and his goddaughter, I could see someone was in but nobody answered the door. Ghosted me and the entire circle of mates we had ever since, been years now, and nobody knows why. Someone checked with his family and he's all fine and everything but just doesn't want anything do with his previous mates. We used to go around drinking a lot, maybe he went sober? Maybe he was gay and didn't want to deal with it and us? Was he jealous of people moving on in life whilst he felt stuck? Just no clue. Got pretty bad as, underneath it all, to be rejected like that by a best mate really makes you question and even hate yourself over every little thing.
It also came at a shitty time for me personally, to not have that support or to spend so much time overthinking myself. My dad became very ill shortly after and a few other things in life where a mate would have been appreciated. Went to half a dozen funerals in the months after, and I'm only on my 40s. Carried the coffin for one guy, next to another guy who we knew was terminally ill and asked me to do the same for him in a few months. And I did. But that group of friends just started to unravel and it all started with that.
In fact, the only time he contact me at all was when I shared on WhatsApp in our friend group that my dad was pretty ill. He typed a message, sent it, then less than a minute later deleted it. Didn't have the chance to read it, just saw the first line in my notifications. At that point I thought, I'm not sure I could ever again be in proximity to him and not go for him.
That's where things snowball, and you think it'd just be so weird now to even contemplate hanging out anywhere, which is so odd given there were a few of us who always had a golden rule of having each others backs no matter what. It kind of broke down that friend group too, others saw what he'd done and were livid, the rest of us we mostly still chat and maybe see each other a few times a year, but that's about it. He's in some friend groups still but never ever replies.
So tomorrow I'm off out with work colleagues. Yes it's not the same connection and it's a bit false, but I know what it is and what it isn't and that's fine. A couple of beers, have to be careful what you say, but I won't wake up the next morning wondering if I'm a truly awful person.
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