The other day a colleague was mourning a friendship. Not dramatically. Not throw-things-into-the-sea mourning. Just that quiet, disoriented grief that happens when someone who used to live in your daily orbit becomes… peripheral.
So naturally, like the emotionally well-adjusted person I am, I pulled up the theme song from Veronica Mars “We Used to Be Friends by The Dandy Warhols” and played it for her.
She had never heard it.
Never. Heard. It.
Meanwhile, that song is embedded in my psyche like emotional wallpaper. It lives in the same mental drawer as AIM away messages, late-night diner conversations, and friendships that felt like they’d outlast climate change.
I’ve mourned a lot of friendships.
Some ended with fireworks , dramatic, operatic, we should probably never speak again endings. Others just thinned out. Like soup stretched too far with water.
No fight. No betrayal.
Just time, distance, mismatched priorities, or the slow realization that one of you is still narrating the friendship while the other has moved on to a new season.
And here’s the thing I wonder about now. Do people still mourn friendships the way we used to?
Because today, friendships don’t always end. They just dissolve into the background noise of social media.
Nobody storms out. Nobody writes a long email. Nobody even unfriends you dramatically anymore.
You just stop texting. They stop replying. The algorithm quietly files you both under “People You May Know.”
And suddenly the only time they reappear is once a year when Facebook reminds you it’s their birthday and suggests you care.
“Write on their timeline!” it chirps, like an overly cheerful grief counselor.
What do you even write?
Happy birthday to someone who once knew my deepest fears, my favorite pizza order, and the story of that one humiliating middle school incident I swore never to tell anyone else?
There’s a strange emotional limbo to modern friendship endings.
Not quite loss. Not quite choice.
More like social evaporation.
And psychologically, that’s a weird place to land.
Humans are wired for narrative closure. We like beginnings, middles, and endings. We like knowing why something mattered and why it stopped.
But ghosting doesn’t give you that.
Ignoring doesn’t give you that.
Drifting definitely doesn’t.
Instead, you’re left with a relationship that exists in a kind of emotional Schrödinger’s box. Not alive, not dead, just archived.
Maybe that’s why that song still hits so hard.
Because it acknowledges something we don’t always say out loud. Friendship loss is real grief.
Not as socially sanctioned as divorce. Not as ritualized as death.
But still a loss of shared language, shared memories, shared versions of ourselves.
And maybe that’s the quiet tragedy of our hyperconnected world.
We have more ways than ever to keep tabs on each other,
and fewer ways to meaningfully say goodbye.
So sometimes all you can do is play the song, nod knowingly, and let someone sit in that strange, unceremonious heartbreak.
Because once upon a time, you used to be friends.
And that mattered.
Categories: Culture, identity, mental health, Pop Culture, Psychology, social media, society
psychologistmimi 
Treating Old FRiEnDS as New FRiEnDS
Treating New FRiEnDS as Old FRiEnDS
While there is Literally
An ‘End’ in FRiEND
There is also No
Escaping from
Being a FRiEnD
For me as there is Literally
A F R E D in FRiEnD Dear Miriam
my destiny is to Never escape being
A FRiEnD
hehe always
Trapped as
F R E D iN FRiEnD to Be
Yet only if it was that easy
to be named this way from birth
Nope that’s Not How Life works
Like my Mother who used to amaze me
by all the Christmas Cards People Sent to
Her her Whole Life on the Shelves of Her Bookcase
Yet it was the focus and the attention span AND WARMTH
she put into
the Letters
she wrote them
as writing was surely
Not my forte then and
i was way More Problem
Solver than Human then too
the More i Used Computers at work
the Less Warm i became what Makes FRiEnDS
Real as Waves
of HeART and
Brain Coherently
Relate in Harmony
As even science Shows
Radiating Warmth Literally
In Positive Energy From our
HeARTS that Others Similarly
Tuned in Vibes and Frequencies
of this Energy Higher Feel Bonding
And Binding By HeART Energies Real
Sigh of Course i had to find the Science of it too
Yet the Truth is i Found the Warmth through Connecting
Emotions with Words in Free Verse Poetry and Generating
That Balance of HeART and Mind in Harmony From a Free Verse
Dance as
Every Body
Part becomes
An Instrument
of Energy of Human
Warmth For Real From
Toes to Head and Yes So Much
More Radiating From HeART for
Real in Person to Others Yes So Real
True Solving Problems at Work Used to
be my Special Interests
Now it’s Just Being
Human and Strangers
Naturally come to Be FRiEnDS
Wherever THE Energy of mY
SoUL HeART and SPiRiT For
Real Radiates Out FOR REAL
as people literally say i Brighten
Up the Room Just By Walking in hehe
Before
i Even
Commence
Another Free Dance
It’s True FRiEnDS who are
Not Warm Will Fade Away Yet
Those Who Share that Warmth
at least
face to
face do
Tend to Stay
As Long as Face
to Face Returns to Warm
Truly Talking about the Weather
Is Enough as we are not talking about
Dopamine Hits
We Are Sharing
The Warmth of
HeARTS For Real
Where not Even a Word
Is Required in a Marriage
Home as the Furnace Within
is
always
turned on
To Warm
New Now With
SMiLes Within For Real
as i celebrate 36 Years of
Marriage this Saturday as my Wife
Surely Didn’t Need a College Degree
or All these
Words to
Simply
Be Warm And Real…
Indeed in Youth there were
Days there was No Electricity
no Food No Water in Her Home
Yet what her Grandmother
At Least Shared
With Her
Was a Love
Radiating
From HeART
Becoming
Her Breath
Forevermore Real Now
i had the Same Benefit
And Similar Challenges
It Just Took 53 Years
for it to fully Sink
in to give
away for free
As true the Autism
was a bit More of
a Shaky Ladder to
climb
to be
i AM
A Warm
Dance And Song Free
And FRiEnD Who Stays Warm
If i was still working on Computers
at Work Not Likely at all More likely
Just
Cold
and
a Barely
Breathing
Human Story
Indeed Even FRoZeN
All in Pain and Numb
Yet no more
no more
The
Furnace
is Back On
flicker flame torch
forest fire “Saint Elmo’s
Fire” Alive as Elmo is Just
Another Word for my Mother’s
Name Helen that Means Light Bringer
too
As she
Passed
away a
day after
Our Anniversary
9 Years ago Lasting
8 Whole Days going without
Food or Drink after a Sudden
Diagnosis of Stage 4 Cancer
And A Hospice Bed on Valentine’s Day 2017
Then As the Doctor Said usually Patients Only
Last 3 Days Yet Her HeART Was So Strong
As this is what
Love Literally
Does to a Heart
Her Last Breath
Deafening in Silence
My First Breath of Hers
to Carry on then for the Unconditional
Warm Love She Always Gave me through
Heaven
And Hell
Within For Real
The Way i Look at it if
She could do it for me
i Have the Potential at least
to do the Same to Everyone Else i Meet
Hehe at
Least
Die
Doing
Yet truly
Fully Alive and Human
No Longer a Barely Breathing Story
i
SMiLe
i Cry i
Laugh Yes
i’m
Warm
Yes i’m Alive..:)
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It is hard when 1) chronic illness makes you less able to keep up with your many friends, and 2) time passes and it’s longer each time you think of them – but now is not the right moment to stop and call them and chat for a while to catch up.
I love so many people in the world, and every day my capacity to court them, to be with them, to spend time together in any way, diminishes.
Until someone dies, and I find myself doing it NOW to talk to my friend or my friend’s survivor(s).
I hope there is an afterlife, and I might ever be able to catch up.
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