"lacy": losing the one friendship i thought would last a lifetime

no. 2 the girl who never gets over anything

“You poison every little thing that I do.”

“Yeah, I despise my rotten mind and how much it worships you”

— lacy by Olivia Rodrigo

For weeks I’ve been trying to figure out how I would start this post, what main idea I would talk about during it. Even now writing it, I’m still not completely sure how I’m going to make this post coherent.

If you’ve ever had a girl best friend, you know that friendship feels like it’ll never end. A bond so strong you can’t even think about something ruining it. But if you’ve lost a best friend, you know that a friendship breakup hurts more than a romantic one.

P and I weren’t best friends for a long time. Compared to other close friendships I have that have lasted over a decade, we were only friends from sophomore to senior year of high school. Maybe the breakup hurt more because of that; in high school, everything feels more serious, more final. Our friendship ending just months away from our graduation, our last goodbye before going our separate ways and not studying together again, well, it definitely hurt more.

Since we first met, I knew she was different in a way; we had a lot of common interests, and she was easy to talk to. Every introvert gets adopted by their extrovert, and we were no different. We very quickly became close; 2 weeks into being friends, we already had our own inside jokes and would talk like we knew each other for years. Often we would refer to each other as “platonic soulmates” because it truly felt like that; if I never found love, I wouldn’t be too mad about it because at least I had her. I had her, but I also, in a way, wanted to be her.

I would find myself comparing myself to her so many times, trying to match the way she carried herself. Carefree, smart, confident, easy to talk to. She was the embodiment of everything I wanted to be. Although we would both pick up on each other’s mannerisms and quirks, it didn’t change the fact that I would feel like I was in her shadow. She was more popular than me, so by association, people knew me only because of her; because we were stuck to each other by the hip, and where one went, the other followed.

I find it amusing now that when Olivia Rodrigo’s album GUTS first released and we were discussing our favorite and least favorites of the album, she said her least favorite was Lacy. She told me she just didn’t get it, that it would take a couple more listens to start liking it. I remember when she told me I found it ironic, the girl who I first thought of listening to the song just “didn’t get it.” But of course she didn’t, she was perfect. She didn’t have anyone that surrounded her that made her feel like what Olivia was talking about because she was Lacy.

Our breakup came somewhat out of the blue for me. We had an argument at the start of the year, which resulted in us being weird around each other, but she had forgiven me for what happened, and even though we weren’t back to normal, we were good. We would talk, and she would ask me boy advice just like before. So when one day she randomly stopped talking to me, not texting me or just replying dryly and now spending her time with her new boyfriend, I was mad. I thought, “All those years of memories and laughs gone because you now finally have a boyfriend?” I was so mad at her for so long, and then when I started dating my now boyfriend, I resented her. Since we had first become friends, my boyfriend had a crush on her. Time and time again, she would turn him down or give him false hope of something finally starting just to give him the classic “it’s not you, it’s me.” So even though she had done her best to leave me behind, I was still consumed by her shadow in my relationship. Things didn’t change; she wasn’t even present, and I was still trying to be her, trying to live up to what she is, what she was. Because how was I ever going to be any better than her?

There’s a lot to say about the friendship we had, good and bad. A lot of different perspectives and points that we can talk about and analyze, and maybe it will all help come to the conclusion as to why our friendship ended. I saw her last week after not seeing her since prom week. It was weird, being friendly but knowing it’s not what our “friendly” once was. I fear she will always haunt my narrative, but also,

I’m just a girl who never gets over anything.