Maybe I Wasn’t the Better Friend

I was scrolling through my old Instagram stories today, and it felt like someone had opened a drawer I hadn’t touched in years. Faces I used to see every day. Names that once lit up my phone with constant notifications. People I laughed with until my stomach hurt. People I thought I would grow old with. And now, they’re just… gone. 

The strangest part is how normal it all seemed back then. Late-night calls, inside jokes, tagging each other in posts, sharing songs that reminded us of something we swore we’d never forget. Those moments felt permanent. But looking at them now, it’s clear they weren’t.

And I can’t help but wonder, was it me? Was I the one who stopped showing up? Did I not fight hard enough to keep those friendships alive? Or did we just quietly outgrow each other, like clothes that don’t fit anymore, even if we still want them to? 

I think about certain people and feel this ache. There are things I should’ve said but didn’t. Times I should’ve checked in but stayed silent. Maybe they were waiting for me to make the first move. Maybe I was too wrapped up in my own chaos to notice theirs. Maybe I wasn’t the better friend.

It’s a hard truth to sit with, realizing that no matter how much you cared, you might not have cared in the right way. Or enough.

At the same time, I try to remind myself that friendships aren’t always meant to last forever. Some come in like seasons, beautiful, fleeting, and gone before you know it. And maybe their purpose wasn’t to stay, but to shape me in some way. To leave me with lessons, laughter, and pieces of myself I might not have found otherwise.

Still… there are nights when I scroll back through those stories, and I feel the loss all over again. Not because I want those friendships exactly as they were, but because I miss the version of myself that existed when I had them. The person who believed we’d always be in each other’s lives. The person who didn’t know how quickly things can change.

Maybe I’ll never know if it was really my fault. Maybe it doesn’t even matter anymore. What I do know is this: the people I still have in my life right now, the ones who stayed, the ones who show up. I don’t want to take them for granted. I don’t want to wake up one day and find their faces only in old stories too.

So maybe I wasn’t the better friend back then. But maybe I will try to be a better one now.