Love Isn’t Access

On friendship, rupture and borrowed light

I’ve been thinking about friendships, the decades-long ones that live inside you. The kind that, over time, morph into your identity like a second spine.

I’ve been thinking about the friendships that fill you up, and the ones that drain you. The ones that carry you through decades. And the ones that break down so quietly you don’t notice until you’re holding a frayed rope once tethered to someone you loved.

Some friendships fade in ordinary ways. Someone gets a job that swallows them whole. Someone moves away, gets married, has a baby, and life reshapes itself around new responsibilities and new rhythms. Schedules stop aligning. The overlap disappears, and so does the friendship.

But some end consciously. And painfully.

I want to tell you about one of those.

Lexi and I met in our early 20s in Montreal, back when we were both studying theatre and full of feral, hungry hope. We loved theatre and art and music and the thrill of being young in a city that made everything feel possible, even when we had no money and drank like we had zero responsibilities.

There was a punk rock element to our friendship back then. Not in the literal sense. There were shows and late nights and army boots and cigarette smoke. But mostly, it was in the way we moved through the world. Messy and carefree. Chaos felt like chemistry to us.

We went out constantly in those early years. We drank too much, night after night, and flirted with grungy art boys, moody musicians, and theatre boys who looked like they hadn’t slept or washed in days.

Lexi didn’t just invite drama. She thrived on it. She was a phenomenal flirt and got a real kick out of being pursued, even if, especially if, she had absolutely no interest.

She had this incredible ability, a specific way she would tilt her head and lock eyes with someone as if she had known them in another lifetime. Guys came toward her like they were being pulled by gravity.

I was not like that. At all.

I could be funny. I could be smart. I could be interesting. But flirting didn’t come naturally to me. Let’s just say I was never the kind of gal who made heads turn.

I have so many memories of us having the greatest time, deep in conversation about the show we were working on or a song we loved or an actor we were obsessing over, until a guy approached.

He’d angle his body toward Lexi, ask her questions, watch her mouth when she spoke. And I would become completely invisible. Like I vanished as the two of them joked and laughed, continuing their conversation without me.

I grew to expect it, so I never really resented her for it. I mostly admired the way she never asked for permission. But it still stung every time, the way the tenor of our night would shift in the presence of a guy, and I would be left staring into my beer.

Pretty quickly, it became clear that she was the sun, and I was the moon, caught in the glow of her borrowed light, careful not to eclipse her.

Still, we remained in each other’s orbit for three decades.

We both left Montreal and ended up in Toronto for grad school. We built careers in theatre and film, scraping and striving and recalibrating ourselves again and again, trying to make art and a life at the same time. We dated. We broke up. We processed heartbreak over drinks, walks through the city, and long phone calls, retelling the same story until it lost its poison.

Neither of us ever married. Neither of us had kids. In some ways, we felt lucky. In other ways, we felt perpetually doomed. Either way, we were part of each other’s chosen families.

There were times we were inseparable. Times we were in conflict. Times we lived together, and times we retreated from each other. But there was a sense that no matter what happened, we would find our way back. That our friendship was both elastic and durable. And that it was real, in the ways it had been tested, worn, and proven over decades.

We were loyal to the story of us, even as the truth was changing.

Somewhere along the way, something shifted in me.

In our 20s, the messiness felt like being alive. But as the decades passed, I started to care about different things. Integrity. Reciprocity. Accountability.

Not because I had figured life out. Because I had started to understand the cost of staying in relationships where those things don’t exist. I finally understood the difference between being loyal and being worn-the-fuck-down. At some point, punk rock stops being a friendship ethos and starts being an excuse.

And look, I have friendships that don’t require constant maintenance. We can go months, even years, without seeing each other. But when we do, it’s immediate. The intimacy is there. The trust is there. The connection clicks right back into place like muscle memory.

So this isn’t about frequency. It’s about presence. It’s about what happens when life gets real.

Five years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Everything got real, fast.

Cancer is so much more than a diagnosis. It’s a complete disruption. A sudden confrontation with your own mortality. There’s the initial shock, then indescribable fear. And the strange, surreal feeling of watching your life become medical.

It shows you things you didn’t realize you were refusing to see.

When I told Lexi, she disappeared.

Not in the way people disappear when they don’t know what to say or need a minute to gather themselves. I mean fully, completely disappeared. No text. No call. No “I love you.” No “I’m scared.” No “I don’t have the capacity, but I’m thinking of you.” Nothing.

I reached out. I sent messages that went unanswered. During one of the most difficult times in my life, my friend of 30 years ghosted me.

That silence didn’t just hurt. It rearranged something in me. I realized how rarely we discuss this kind of loss.

Romantic breakups come with a whole cultural care package: songs, movies, therapy-speak, permission to fall apart in public. Friendship breakups don’t. There’s no script. No handbook. Just the expectation that you’ll be fine.

And the truth is, friendships have been the longest relationships of my life. Longer than any romance. Longer than any job. Some friends feel closer than family.

Lexi resurfaced a year later to apologize. She offered an explanation. Her pain. Her issues. Her inability to handle what was happening to me. All valid. All likely true.

But I needed more. I needed accountability.

That was the moment it clicked. Our friendship could survive chaos, conflict, even long stretches of distance. But it couldn’t survive the truth.

Because we hadn’t evolved. We were stuck in an old pattern, each playing our part. I avoided conflict. I kept hard truths unspoken. And I let myself shrink. In my own way, I disappeared too.

Beyond nostalgia and history, beyond loyalty to who we were, friendships need mutual care. They need honesty, reciprocity, and room for both people to be whole.

That’s where I finally landed. With clarity.

Of course, I still think about her.

That’s the other part no one prepares you for.

Like all grief, friendship grief isn’t linear. It rises in waves. It lives in street corners and old songs and the particular kind of laughter you shared with that person.

It’s been over five years. Every now and then a memory pops up. We’re back in Montreal at our favourite local on Saint-Laurent, in our ripped tights and boots, smoking and laughing like we invented the future.

I still miss her and question whether I did the right thing. Occasionally, I have the urge to reach out.

But most of the time I feel something else: relief.

The relief of no longer contorting myself into a friendship. The relief of no longer living inside a dynamic that took too much and gave too little back when it mattered most.

It has also taught me one of the hardest lessons of my adulthood. That it’s possible to care deeply about someone yet recognize that staying close to them is costing you something you can’t afford to keep losing.

In our 20s, chaos feels like chemistry. Messiness feels like being alive. But as we get older, we evolve. Our values evolve. Our nervous systems evolve. Our capacity evolves too. We start wanting relationships that can survive the truth.

We want friendships rooted in integrity, kindness, and mutual care. Not without disagreement or conflict, but with the ability to return. To be honest. To make amends. To stay present.

We can love someone, understand their pain, hold compassion for their history, and still decide that their access to us is a privilege no longer earned.

Sometimes the real boundary isn’t a wall. It’s stepping out of that orbit and refusing to live in someone else’s shadow.

Breakup Mixtape #3 - Mark Bijak Illustration