When I moved to the DC area in 2004, I quickly met two girls who became my closest friends. The three of us were best friends. We weren’t exactly alike, but we had enough in common to relate to each other. We were fresh out of college and experiencing the joy of living in a dynamic city in our twenties. 

To protect their privacy, I’ll call them Lauren and Carly. We all met at work. Lauren and I were new to town. We didn’t have much else to do except hang out with each other, and that suited us just fine. Carly came along a little later. I liked her immediately and made sure to include her. Then Lauren got married and moved a couple hours away. The relatively short drive meant that I spent a lot of time visiting Lauren and also that I became even closer to Carly, who still lived nearby.

I told Lauren and Carly about my bipolar diagnosis early on. It wasn’t until a few years later in 2007 that lithium was prescribed to me and brought me more stability. I was a bit of a mess, but we were in our twenties. It seemed like everyone my age was a bit of a mess, so I didn’t stand out that much.

Bryan and I started dating in 2008, and we married in March 2011. That fall, Bryan gave up his full-time job and started attending college full-time at the University of Maryland. He had a part-time job lined up, but it fell through. Money was extremely tight until he found another part-time job 4 months later. It’s embarrassing to admit, but my parents helped us out a little those months so that we could afford groceries.

I fell into one of the worst depressions I’ve ever experienced. A bipolar depression even lithium couldn’t lift. All the light went out of my life. Lauren and Carly would text me and try to keep in touch, but I lost interest in everything. I couldn’t go to dinner or do anything else with them because of lack of money, and I was so depressed that I probably wouldn’t have left the house even if money was no issue.

My one-word replies to their texts and general lack of effort built up animosity on their ends. But all I could think was, why haven’t they tried to get me on the phone to check on me since obviously something was wrong? I expected them to be mind readers and unconsciously used that to prove that they didn’t really care about me and distanced myself even more.

Once Bryan started working part-time and money was no longer an issue, my depression lifted, but the damage to my friendships was done.

My relationship with Lauren had become rocky prior to my depression. It felt as if we were naturally growing apart, but my relationship with Carly was still relatively intact. However, as time went on, I would hear about Carly spending time with mutual friends, with no invites sent my way. I rarely heard from her. It felt like I was the only one trying to keep our friendship going and that I had to chase her down to make plans.

My bumpy relationship with Lauren may have been the reason Carly was distant, or maybe she had gotten used to not spending time with me during my depression. I doubt that I completely imagined this change in my friendship with Carly, but I definitely may have amplified it in my mind.

Looking back, it is very likely that I sabotaged my friendship with Carly. Soon after, I created a situation that seemed to prove that she had ghosted our friendship and broke up with her as a friend. She did not fight to remain friends. It was an excuse to get out because I was so upset about feeling like I had been replaced. Maybe I had been replaced, but Carly and I had been friends for many years. She was a bridesmaid in my wedding—she traveled all the way to the Caribbean to stand up for me. Didn’t that friendship deserve a conversation, a check in, an “am I out of my damn mind or are you over me?”

My bruised ego was not going to allow me to be the one to kick off that conversation, and my bipolar had started acting up and influencing me as well. When I ended our friendship before she could, it was brutal. In my mind, Carly had broken up with me—I just made it official. It was the worst breakup of my life, much worse than any boyfriend. I mourned our friendship for months. After walking away from Carly, my relationship with Lauren went from rocky to nonexistent.

It’s been a decade since those friendships ended. To this day, Lauren and Carly are still best friends. I’m glad that they have remained so close, although for the first couple years I felt heartbroken when I saw pictures of them together on social media. I would think for a split second, “Shouldn’t I be in those pictures?” Um, no, you shouldn’t. In the end, I’ll never know if our friendships would have continued had my bipolar not interfered. 

Those friendships and their demise caused me to approach future friendships very differently. I would like to think I am a better friend now than I was all those years ago. A more honest friend, and a more forgiving one. I have some really wonderful friends, people who get me and truly love me for exactly who I am, so it looks like we all ended up being winners. Maybe I needed to lose Lauren and Carly to become a better person and friend. Or maybe we just weren’t meant for the long term.

Based on my experience with Lauren and Carly as well as in high school and college, I also learned that being in a “girl clique” is not for me. My friendship with Lauren and Carly had its positives, but it was exhausting for me to be part of an intertwined group of friends. At some point as my bipolar became more of a problem, I mentally threw in the towel in regards to putting as much energy into the group as it required. I just couldn’t do it anymore. And maybe that’s what started all the problems in the first place.