Facebook and Instagram both keep recommending her profile to me. She has changed her profile photo to a selfie of her showing off her ring.
The husband of the woman I thought was my close friend is now following her (which may be why her profile is now getting recommended to me) and he has posted congratulations to her on Facebook. I can't picture him posting on her page if they hadn't met her and started to get to know her.
I posted on Saturday on my Facebook page after I broke my favorite wine glass about how I was struggling and how I had stumbled upon his engagement. I got an outpouring of support from so many people but she and her husband were completely silent. And considering the husband has followed every single one of my stories (without interaction) including the one I posted yesterday and both of them have been active on Facebook all weekend, I'm sure they saw it.
With how my friend has not been there for me at all, it feels like they chose sides.
Sometimes I wish I knew what stories he was telling other people about our divorce and marriage. Maybe that would explain why I lost this friend. And if that is the case, I wish she had cared enough about me to talk to me about it before just distancing herself and abandoning me to go through all this on my own.
Part of me wonders why I mourn this relationship so much. The divorce showed me how unbalanced and unreciprocated it has always been. The terms of it have always been at her convenience and based on her needs. I was the friend that uplifted and encouraged her as she doubted herself as a new mother, the one who held and rocked her oldest daughter when she herself couldn't get her to stop crying. I was the friend that listened and validated as she struggled with another friend distancing herself from her. I supported her even fairly recently as she shared struggles with her work.
And I didn't ask for much when the divorce hit - just a response to a few texts when I hit my lowest moments, the occasional check in (at one point she promised to reach out weekly, something that never happened - I didn't even hear from her monthly), and her to follow through on getting together with me when she said she would. I even accepted her bringing her children last minute a couple of times when I really would have preferred some one-on-one time. I'm not too much. This is bare minimum friendship stuff. I have really lost nothing by losing her as a friend. But it doesn't feel that way.
What I didn't expect with the divorce was how much it would shift everything. I didn't just lose a husband and the life I had built with him. I lost the self I was in that life. I lost that perspective of viewing the world. I lost innocence. I lost other connections, like the ones with this couple, that at one point felt so meaningful to me. And I lost my sense of reality when I realized how much of my life was built on a fantasy or influenced by his gaslighting.
No matter how much good has come out of all of that and how much better off I am, it doesn't eliminate the feelings of deep loss that comes with the destruction of everything I thought I knew and the grief that goes along with it.
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