A letter to someone I love – whose heart is breaking

I know it is not something that you want to hear now, but you will have other friends in the future

I’m not sure I’ve seen you quite so devastated before (Getty)

I know how hard this is. It is the summer holidays – and your best friend’s last day at school. After that her family will move away and she will start at a new school. I’m sorry that you are so cut up about it. I’m not sure I’ve seen you quite so devastated before.

It feels like the end of your friendship, I know. It won’t be, but I know it feels like that. Everything will be more difficult. I have been through exactly the same thing. I won’t tell you I know exactly how it feels, because – the truth is – I don’t.

Although I have been fortunate to see the way you and she interact, I can’t claim to have been privy to the true depths of your friendship. Nobody can. The best we can do is press our noses to the windows of your friendships as closely as you will allow us to, while trying not to steam up the glass.

When I was 11, my best friend – Will Potts – went to a different secondary school. We’d lived on the same street just a few doors down from each other since we were born, but despite our proximity, it became an insurmountable barrier. We stopped playing out in the street together, stopped going around to each other’s houses. We stopped, to all intents and purposes, being friends.

This induced a terrible melancholy in me whenever I thought about it. We’d been such good friends from such a young age. We would see each other all the time. My first sleepover was at his house. We would play football together in the garden for hours on end until it got dark. And now all that was gone. My loss was slow and gradual, but the fact it was so drawn out didn’t make it hurt any less.

It felt terrible parting with this person who seemed to know me better than anyone else. So I’m not going to lie to you and say it will get better straight away, or that it will be easy. It won’t. It will be hard, and it will hurt. It will take time. Even after what seems an unimaginably long period of time has passed – months, maybe even years – it will never be the same. But the fact it hurts means that your friendship matters – and that is important to remember.

I know it is not something that you want to hear now, but you will have other friends in the future. I made new, life-changing friends when I went to secondary school – and you will too. And so, too, if/when you go to university and on into the workplace. These friends will not necessarily better or worse, but different.

This is why the categorisation of friendships with labels like “best” is unhelpful, because friendships don’t sit on a linear spectrum. Though we may try, friends can’t be rated on a scale from one to 10.

Friendships are more like colours – a continuous spectrum in a multi-dimensional space. Some are more scarlet and less green, some are less purple and more yellow. Some friends are the ones you can kick back and relax with – the friends you go to when you need to forget about everything. Some are those who you can pour your heart out to when you’re feeling low. Some you can confide your deepest secrets in, safe in the knowledge they will be kept locked away and never shared with anyone else.

Every so often you may find a friend who is a mix of all of these traits: the elusive white light of friendships. These ones are special, but the great thing about them is that – though rare and hard to ignite – once burning their light never truly goes out.

Just a couple of years ago, before the pandemic hit, I was giving a talk in my hometown of Manchester. After the talk I chatted with some of the people who had come to listen. After one conversation finished, an older gentleman approach me carrying what looked like a greetings card. I didn’t recognise him at first, but he introduced himself as Martin and everything clicked into place. Martin Potts, Will’s dad.

We had a lovely conversation catching up about what his kids were up to and as we eventually parted ways he pressed the card into my hands. I opened it later that evening when I was alone. Printed inside was a beautifully crafted poem he had composed about knowing me as a young boy and my friendship with his middle son Will. On the inside cover of the card was scrawled a mobile number preceded by my friend’s name.

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I sat on this number for six months. Several times I got my mobile out of my pocket and typed the number into the message app. It had been so long and we seemed to have drifted so far. Eventually I plucked up the courage and suggested we meet up for a drink when I was next in Manchester.

I was so glad I did. Within 10 minutes of sitting down in the pub together we were deep in animated conversation again, making plans – like 10 year-olds who’d just found out that school was cancelled tomorrow. In no time at all it was last orders. That evening rekindled the embers of a friendship I thought had gone out years ago.

And so this is what I want to share with you: that the flame of true friendship endures. Some friendships, though they seem extinct and lifeless – separated by miles and years – are actually just dormant waiting for the flash that will spark them back to life. Never give up hope.