I had the same friendship group for 14 years. 2021 finally broke us.

I am ending 2021 with less friends than I began it with.

That's a weird thing for me to say. My friend group has for so long been tied to my identity. I have prided myself on the years of memories, adventures, laughs, and the "wow, it's so cool that you've all stayed together!" comments from old acquaintances.

There will be a sting the next time I hear someone say that.

For the most part, my group of friends has been the same since high school, with a few other friends we've picked up as life went on. 

In the early years, we would go out every weekend - to a BYO, to a house party, to someone's parent's place for a big ol' sleepover. Then we got real jobs and real boyfriends, and we'd host dinner parties and meet up on lunch breaks. Some of us moved away, and we'd keep in touch via the group chat of memes and cringey memories. Most recently, we'd meet for coffee and walks in the sunshine, sometimes with new, cute, babbling additions in tow. 

But the pandemic has had such a profoundly negative impact on these friendships, and I don't see them ever repairing themselves.

Image: Canva. 

It began bubbling away in 2020, when some members of the group found ourselves locked out of our homes by border restrictions and cancelled flights. It was telling who checked in regularly, and who didn't. 

Then there were those damn rabbit holes, which enticed people with too much free time on their hands and left them with outlandish ideas. Social media posts became more and more unhinged, and our group chat splinted into multiple others, expressing "WTF?" on one hand and - I have also been told - "sheep" on the other.

This subsided as the virus became less of a threat to us, personally. One of the benefits of living in this part of the world was a relatively normal time over late-2020 through to mid-2021. Talk of the virus made way for celebrations of new jobs, house purchases, pregnancies and that short-lived trans-Tasman bubble. Rabbit holes had been filled in and for a while, things returned to as normal as they could given the whole global pandemic thing.

But, as we know, 2021 soon became very dark. Outbreaks and lockdowns once again dominated the lives of many of us, and then came the very important race to get the population vaccinated.

Image: Canva. 

This time, it was impossible to ignore the gaping divides within our inner circle. The angry, inflammatory divide that we were watching take place on in protests and memes was playing out on a much smaller scale in my DMs.

This story isn't meant to proclaim one side as better than the other, or get into a debate about lockdowns and vaccinations. The thing is, the fractures in these friendships had probably been there for a while, but the landscape of 2021 had them crack harder and faster than anyone expected. It was the straw that breaks the camel's back.

There were different points of view within the group, and it was - unsurprisingly - polarising, but it was the lack of productive conversation that showed there was little left to salvage. Why were we debating this? Why were we using our energy - which was in short supply, because you know, pandemic - on hostility? Soon, we realised that were holding onto friendships that had run their course simply because we thought we had to.

It had been 14+ years, we thought. Who were we without this group?

Well, it turns out we are still ourselves, just evolved versions of those teenagers who came first together over school and boys, who couldn't really relate to each other anymore.

I have learned that friendship drifts and breakdowns come with a lot of guilt. You wonder if you're doing the right thing, or if you need to try harder to hold on to these people, and it takes a while to cycle through all these feelings to realise that it's okay to grow apart.

Image: Canva. 

There's that cheesy saying 'everyone comes into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime', and our (admittedly, quite long) season as one big collective is over. It's sad, but deep down I think it was always going to be happen at some stage. Maybe, without the pandemic, we could've held on a few more years. The cracks could have been painted over a couple more times. But they were always going to grow too big to ignore at some point.

On the bright side, the blow-up ultimately led to a sense of relief. It's better for everyone this way. There are smaller groups now: stronger than ever and with a better understanding of each other. 

As for the rest? We wished each other well, and when the world opened up again, organised separate brunch dates.

Feature image: Mamamia/Canva.

Can’t live without your phone or the internet? Take our survey now and you could win a $50 gift voucher!