It's interesting to think that breaking off ties with your best friend could hurt just as much, if not more, than breaking off ties with your significant other.

It sounds really stupid, but I almost cried when I broke my 314-day Snapchat streak with one of my best friends. I know what you're thinking, "Why would you cry over losing a Snapchat streak? It's nothing special."

While there is nothing special about sending daily pictures of your bedsheets that the receiver can't really tell are your bedsheets because you didn't lift your phone high enough to take the picture so you ended up sending them a black abyss, or the hangnail on your right index finger (that is actually really gross why would you send that?) just to keep up a pointless Snapchat streak, I felt as though that was the last tangible thing that held my friendship together.

In the beginning, like most beginnings, when things were good, they were really good. I had first met them in the backseat of my friend's white Nissan Sentra on the way to our friend's 20th birthday party in the summer of 2017.

The click wasn't immediate, however, a Facebook friend request and a two-hour conversation over Messenger later, a friendship blossomed. I remember nights where we went out to get drinks at Zero Degrees, exchanging playful banters, and a sense of ease when it came to talking to them, something that rarely occurred when I made a new friend. Our group chat became more engaging with them in it, as did our nights during the week when they invited us to hang out.

So many memories were made in such a small fraction of time, I felt like I took it all for granted thinking that that was how it was always going to be.

It was hard to believe how rapidly the dynamic in our friend group changed after an argument had divided us into two different groups which had ultimately resulted in them going MIA for a while, only popping in when they had a question to ask. Because I had sided with them in the argument and defended their position, our relationship hadn't been affected as strongly as it had with the others who had instigated it.

However, the graduality of the change in their behavior was hard to miss. It's hard to really pinpoint when things started to become different, but one thing is for certain: I forgot what it was like for our conversation to sound normal. For a while, I couldn't tell why I was feeling sad until I realized that maybe it was because it felt like I was losing my best friend. When I had addressed it with them, they had shrugged it off as nothing more than them focusing on themselves. I could accept that considering their circumstances with their job and a new relationship, however, I couldn't accept the feeling that the shift in dynamic was drastic.

At some point, our friendship just seemed too one-sided, me putting in too much effort and getting nothing in return.

The past few months leading up to this decision have been nothing more than forced, passing conversations, opposite of how we used to talk with each other, and time not being put into hanging out. Then one day, after asking them a few general questions that I never got answers to, I finally asked why they had just been reading my messages but haven't been responding, to which they replied "because I don't feel like talking to you. If I feel obligated to respond, that's toxic to me, take that as you may."

This caught me off guard, especially because it wasn't like I had been pestering them with daily questions. The thought that my behavior towards them was potentially toxic broke my heart, mostly due to my first-hand experience with toxic friendships and how deeply that had affected my life during my junior and senior year of high school. Hadn't I been considerate of their space while making sure to check up on them every now and then? Was it not enough? Was it too much? This had invoked some serious self-reflection, as well as emotions of disbelief and confusion, eventually leading to my decision to quit putting in effort altogether. If they had felt this way, maybe it was for the best to go our separate ways. Even though the thought of ending things weighed heavily on my heart, especially when I saw the hourglass next to their name on my Snapchat, I realized that I couldn't just keep holding on for the sake of all the good memories we shared together. They held no relevance to the present and surely wouldn't make things go back to the way they were.

When I finally let the hourglass take my streak away, I was really sad. It was over. I'd extinguished the last ties to a friendship I didn't know that I'd be able to get back and it hurt, but it had hurt for the past few months, too. A lot of people will think that breaking up with your best friend is nothing in comparison to breaking up with your significant other. In a way, they have a point, simply because the intimacy in a romantic relationship is nowhere near the same as the intimacy of a purely platonic relationship; there are both physical and emotional ties that need to be severed.

But in the end, who do you go crying to when your romantic relationship ends? When you have problems? When you receive good and bad news? When you're scared? To that, I answer, my best friend. After all, it's not like your significant other can be your groom/bride AND your best man/maid of honor.