I'm Breaking Up With My Best Friend

An open letter to Rejection

TO REJECTION

I don’t know how we became best friends. I just know we were. There wasn’t one defining moment I can look back on, but we were joined at the hip from the start.

Always there, never abandoned.

That’s why I loved you.

You were consistent. Always reminding me of how unloved and unwanted I was. Except for you. You were always ready to turn my head to the one that didn’t notice, the one that walked by me, the one that ignored me. A room full of people who wanted me there, and you found the one who didn’t.

My ride or die.

You made sure no other emotion landed as hard. Not the compliments. Not the accolades. Not the trophies. They bounced off. The cuts got in. You held the shield and I thanked you for it.

We grew up together. I knew I could always count on you.

Maybe it was the boy in third grade who called me a dog. The one I had a crush on.

Maybe it was being teased for being fat and not pretty enough.

Maybe it was the girls ganging up on me while we roller-skated down the neighborhood street.

Maybe it was my parents. Sitting in the car crying before the strangers took me away, and the last thing I heard: “Just remember, we always love you.”

I stopped looking for where you were born. What I know is what that sentence taught me at seventeen years old. Love is what people say to you on your way out.

The car drove off. No explanation, no understanding.

Terrified.

How does someone who says they love me let this happen?

But you were there to comfort me.

You taught me how to soothe the pain as I put chemicals in my body.

We got so close I forgot you were even there. Second nature.

I grew up. I built a life. Outwardly I looked like someone who had it all together. You loosened your grip. You got complacent.

You took my friendship for granted.

And so I lived on, and I lived my life.

Then came the year they all left. It began fall 2025.

Two of my closest friends and spiritual pillars moved out of state within a couple months of each other.

My friend got sick. In January she was gone. She didn’t leave me. Cancer took her. But you made even her death about me.

A twenty-year friendship faded me out with no explanation. The more I chased her, the tighter your grip. By February I had to walk away for my own dignity. And even though I did what I knew was best for me, I bawled in a quiet room while you comforted me whispering.

See, even people that have known you the longest don’t want you around. There’s something wrong with you.

But you didn’t stop there.

Then March. The career. Rejected, tossed out, thrown away. As if that wasn’t enough for you to remind me of your dwelling place within me.

But here’s what you didn’t count on.

It backfired.

When I lost the job, you had nowhere to hide. No distraction, no work, no busy calendar of friendships to hide behind. It was me and God now.

Romans 12:2. My verse for 2026. The renewing of the mind. I had no idea it required action. The two lines that sound so great in theory brought me to a battle within my mind I didn’t know was there.

I went to war.

How else do I know you’re there without the experiences to reveal themselves to me?

The closed doors. The silent phone. The people walking away. He couldn’t show me what you were without stripping away everywhere you hid.

I cried. I wrestled. I poured out. I lamented. I prayed. I read His Word and I sat still.

And He slowly started to reveal your true colors. I didn’t see it all at first.

No distractions this time. Just you and me face to face.

You told me you were protecting me. You never protected me. You made sure nothing could reach me and called it safety.

The shield was the stronghold.

How dare you.

I pruned you for thirty years because I believed your lies. I couldn’t let you go because your companionship was my only constant. You were familiar and reliable. But you underestimated how deeply connected I was getting to the Father. The One who made me.

And He pulls from the roots. Matthew 15:13.

Strongholds get demolished. And not with fleshly weapons. 2 Corinthians 10:4.

I stopped chasing you.

I stopped cleaning myself up before I came to God. Stopped over-explaining myself to people who had already decided. I started to turn my head the other way. And then slowly my back.

I picked up the sword of the Spirit I never knew I had. Ephesians 6:17. You made sure of that. Thirty years of your voice in my ear and I never once heard about the weapon sitting in my hands.

God was greater. God is greater.

I’m standing firm while He extracts.

Some days your voice is loud. Some days it’s the first one I have before my feet hit the floor. But now you’re an acquaintance knocking at the door I no longer invite inside.

You’ve been exposed.

His presence is stronger than your grip.

It isn’t a fight I win. He gets to the door first.

On the worst days I’m David in the cave. Psalm 142. I pour out my complaint before Him. No man cared for my soul. The lie and the answer in the same breath.

I’m asking the Holy Spirit to bind up what’s been broken most of my life. Psalm 147:3.

I’m facing the betrayal of your friendship at forty-five years old.

You were crafty. You had me fooled. But now I know the deceiver you really are.

There’s a peace now that doesn’t need the approval. It grew in the soil you left behind.

I’m focused on the ones in front of me. The ones who know me and want to be around me. I’m no longer looking back at the ones who ignore me.

I welcome the quiet. The silent phone was your weapon.

Now the silence is where He restores me. It’s in the quiet moments that I draw near to the Creator, and He reminds me He made me just the way I am.

Deep exhale.

I’m firmly planted where God wants me. Planted by Him this time. Psalm 1:3.

We grew up together. You're not who I thought you were.

We’re no longer embracing. You’re no longer hiding yourself.

I see you.

And I’m turning my back.

I’m being restored.

No one is too lost to be saved.

He finds us in the mess.

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