WHEN SISTERHOOD ENDS

LUVVIE AJAYI JONES

I GOT MARRIED IN 2019, and on the way to being a wife, I dealt with the heartbreak of losing a few friends I thought would be lifelong. One in particular was tough for me to handle. As a deeply loyal, loves-to-plan-out-her-life-and-know-what’s-coming Capricorn, change of any type usually jars me. So when I go through change that feels like something is taken away from me, I end up in a cocoon of my own making, singing sad love songs by Toni Braxton. My love songs aren’t about losing romantic love, but about losing something that sometimes feels even bigger: the love of (someone you thought was) a lifelong buddy.

Anyone who goes through wedding planning and comes out on the other side not having lost their mind and been committed to an institution is a superhero. It is life’s boot camp. The process teaches you so much about yourself, but it also teaches you a lot about everyone else you know.

Weddings can be the catalyst of a lot of heartbreak, even when you happily marry the one you love, like I did.

I had heard for years that getting married is one of the things that makes people show their whole entire asses with bad behavior. Even though it should be just about the bride and groom, it is often expanded to include everyone else’s feelings, from the aunt you wished you didn’t have to invite to the high school friends you haven’t spoken to in years who somehow expect to make the guest list.

For me, what caused my heartbreak was losing a friend I thought I’d be in rocking chairs with in fifty years, reflecting on our twenties shenanigans and how we used to act up. We’d been friends since college. At one point, we even called each other the so-you-know-it’s-real title of “best friends.” We’d slept on twin beds together to get through losing boyfriends, been there for each other through post-college living in the big cities of our choice, and eventually became adults trying to figure it out together.

Over the four years before my wedding, we probably spoke every other month or two. Lives get busy, so those were full-on “catch me up on life” conversations. I just knew that in our olden years we’d be talking about the time in college when she picked me up and threw me on her hip, and we’d laugh.

Five months before my wedding, and a week after she and I had a catch-up conversation, I got an email from her. It ended with “I will always have love for you whenever we cross paths. Take really good care of yourself until then, and congratulations on this important next chapter of your life.”

She’d ended our almost two-decade-long friendship over email.

You’re probably like, “Wait, what happened?” Thanks for asking. I was going to tell you anyway. My husbae and I were having two weddings: a traditional Yoruba ceremony and a Western one (white dress, tux, etc.). The Yoruba ceremony was to honor my lineage (I’m from Nigeria), and it’s a colorful celebration where the bride and groom wear traditional outfits in the color of their choice. Also, the couple have an aso ebi squad. Aso ebi is Yoruba for “clothes of kin,” which basically means that people who are in it wear matching clothes. Their fabric tells guests that they are our crew.

As we were planning the wedding, my fiancé and I made a rule that for someone to be in our respective wedding squads, both of us had to have met the person. It meant the friends he chose couldn’t be strangers to me, and the friends I chose couldn’t be strangers to him. This friend of mine didn’t meet this criterion because she actually hadn’t met my fiancé in person, even though he and I had been together for four years at that point. I think they might have spoken once on the phone. He didn’t even really know her, which in itself was a sign that she and I had drifted apart. Of course she was invited to the wedding. She simply wouldn’t be in the squad wearing matching fabric.

The email I received, breaking up our friendship, was in response to that. She assumed that because she wasn’t in the squad, our friendship was irrevocably broken. And she saw fit to send me an email ending our seventeen-year relationship.

Reading the email actually gave me a stomachache. Platonic heartbreak is just as real as the romantic kind, and knowing that I’d lost someone whom I considered important to me felt physically painful.

When we tell people that we’ve lost a friend, we receive platitudes like “Well, some people are just in your life for a season.” Or “You will find out who’s your real friend. Honor it.” Or “Consider yourself lucky to have one less person to deal with who isn’t really there for you.” Those things can all be true logically, but heart-wise, you might feel like you got hit by a dump truck.

I’ve been friend-broken-up-with before, but this was the most painful one yet. I remember sitting on my couch that night in tears, feeling insignificant and disposable. My fiancé (now husband) saw how sad I was, and he commented with one of those platitudes: “Honestly, if she didn’t make the aso ebi squad, it means you weren’t as close as you might have thought.” He wasn’t wrong at all. Yet and still, it hurt like hell.

Why does this loss feel so big? Because oftentimes these are the people you assume will be there come the highs and lows of life. These are the people you think will be your shoulder to lean on if the person you’re playing horizontal boogie with decides to dip. It leaves you feeling raw and vulnerable in a real way, because it doesn’t feel like a rejection of you as a lover; it feels like a rejection of you as a person.

I retreated from my friends. I didn’t do anything major or drastic—I just went into my own bubble. I spoke when spoken to, but I didn’t initiate much contact with people. I was deep in my feelings of “if she can do that, anyone can.” I was grieving the end of knowing that this person was someone I could call if I needed to, and it showed up as me pulling back from others to try to brace myself against hurt.

But this is where community shows up. This is when I learned what it was like for the village to fill our gaps. This is when my heart was mended.

A couple of months after I received the email, my friend J messaged me to say she knew I would be speaking at a conference in Miami. She told me to give her my schedule while there because she wanted to plan a bachelorette weekend for me. She told me to mind my business and ask no questions, and that she would meet me in Miami the Friday after my talk.

Late Thursday night, J showed up at my hotel room, told me to pack all my things up, and then said, “We’re going to the airport. The rule still remains: ask no questions.” Thus began the epic saga that was my bride-napping bachelorette trip to Anguilla, where nine of my girlfriends showed up and surprised me.

I was taken from my hotel to the airport, where we boarded a flight to Atlanta, and one friend popped up on that flight. When we landed in ATL, four of my friends were waiting as we exited the plane. There I was blindfolded and walked to another gate, where another friend surprised me. I looked up at the screen near the gate, and it said “St. Maarten.” This was where I fell out on the ground. THEY’RE TAKING ME TO ST. MAARTEN??? OMG. But wait, that’s out of the country, and I definitely didn’t have my passport on me.

Right on cue, J pulled it out of her bag and handed it to me. WHATTT?? My fiancé had mailed her my passport. Because: PREPARED. We boarded the flight, and two more friends were on the plane. I was trapped in a glass case of emotions. It was too much in the BEST of ways.

We took off, ten people strong, and landed in St. Maarten, where we were led to a boat: our real destination was Anguilla!!! We played loud music and enjoyed the thirty-minute boat ride, with drinks flowing, and I felt my heart growing to three times its usual size.

Once we went ashore I was taken to our home for the next five days: a beautiful beachfront villa at the Four Seasons, with its own private pool. *faints*

Over those five days, we had pajama nights, pool nights, a spa day, and a privately catered dinner. The trip was perfectly curated to make sure that I felt loved and celebrated as I was going into this new season in my life as a wife. They gave me gifts, advice, and time, all while in paradise. My favorite parts of the trip were eating like gluttons, drinking like fish, and laughing like drunk hyenas. We danced so much, played games, and shared heartfelt stories. It was one of the best trips of my life and one of the biggest showings of love I’ve ever experienced.

It was the salve to my wound.

The last night of the trip, I remember sitting at the head of the table, looking at these nine women who had taken a week out of their lives to shower me with love, and my eyes started leaking. They didn’t even know how much this gift meant to me. They didn’t know how significant it was to be made to feel so significant. It wasn’t even the opulence of it all. It was the time, energy, and presence. Because what they did was pick me up from the depths of self-doubt, anguish, and dejection, and show me affection and tenderness that only your girls know how to snuggle you up in.

And they wanted nothing from me in return. All they wanted was my presence and openness to receiving their love. All they wanted was to see me chase joy and catch it.

That trip changed my life. Not because it was extravagant. Or that we were at the Four Seasons living the life our parents had never even dared to dream up for us. It changed my life because it shifted something in me about what friendship really looks like.

Oftentimes, we get too busy to connect with those we love. But these women stopped their lives for me, and I didn’t have the words to express my gratitude. I would have been fine with Miami or ATL or Cleveland or even my living room for that bachelorette celebration, and it would have meant something very similar. But they went above and beyond and took me to paradise in Anguilla. I reveled in all of it because they fed my spirit and my heart. They showed up for me when I really needed it, and showed how much “sisterhood” is a verb.

These two situations, back-to-back, taught me a few key things.

Our feelings are valid, but they aren’t permanent. Heartbreak can be painful, but we cannot stay in it. If I had been left to my own devices, I would have continued to wallow. If my other friends hadn’t insisted on taking me on that trip, I would have gone from the conference back to my couch, avoiding people and continuing my own retreat of one. Do I still miss this friend from time to time? I do. But the wound the situation left isn’t raw anymore and doesn’t ache much.

How people react to us is usually about them, not us. This is why we shouldn’t constantly internalize the situations we find ourselves in or the treatment we receive. We can absolutely be introspective about what we need to adjust, but we shouldn’t use it to create judgments about who we are. I let it make me feel disposable and thought I wasn’t worth fighting for or worth giving grace to. But really, maybe this ex-friend of mine was going through a rough time, and maybe she already had another relationship that was fraught, so it made her handle ours the way she did. Maybe it was less about me being a shitty person and more about her not having the capacity to handle it differently.

Friendship is not about transactions. We cannot keep score in friendships, approaching relationships thinking about how we can pay someone back for their acts of kindness. The Bridal Luvv trip was such an amazing time, and I remember thinking, “How can I pay them back?” I cannot. And that’s okay. They gave me a gift, and I do not need to feel like I am somehow indebted. I can be appreciative, though. After the trip, I sent them each a package with my favorite skincare products and I wrote each of them a personal note about what their presence meant to me. That’s all I could do. Nothing more.

Because friendship isn’t about payback or keeping score.

Friendship isn’t even in the giant gestures or the big trips. I know my friends and I wouldn’t have been able to have that trip five years ago. We JUST got nice things yesterday. To be a friend is to show appreciation, from a well-timed phone call to a lovely note to going over and doing the laundry they haven’t had time for. Or taking their kids for the evening so they can go on a date. Great friendships aren’t necessarily in the material things; we can show appreciation with gestures that are acts of service.

I reflect on that time and think about the highs and the lows. I think about how my friends knew I was going through a rough time and decided to do something that would be meaningful to me. I think about how I felt too beat up to even fight them on it. It was all a gift. Because it taught me that with the valley of heartbreak, even when platonic, can come some really amazing peaks of community. In the loss I felt from losing that friend, I gained deeper love and companionship in the friends who showed up for me and showed me that my sisterhood is present and strong.

I was reminded that we are always worth loving, and although people might walk away from us, we are always worth cherishing.