I kept waiting for the friendship to return to a version that no longer existed

Dear Delyara, I think that’s what delayed the grief. I wasn’t in denial exactly. I could see that something had changed. But I kept acting as though enough patience, enough history, enough care, enough understanding might eventually return the friendship to an earlier shape. It didn’t. Some endings are hard because you lose the person. Others are hard because you finally accept that the version you were loyal to is already gone. That acceptance arrived late for me. And painfully.