growing up and away

Learning experience: What was a lesson you learned this year that changed you?

I learned other lessons that were more important than this one, but I've touched on them before and will mention them again in my year wrap-up.
But this lesson was hard, sad, and instructional. I wish to mention it once, briefly, and no more.

It was that the friend you trust with everything, all your secrets and contemplations and desires, when you are 26 may not be who you can trust with all those things when you are 27. And it's not because of some explosive dramatic event. It is realized slowly, painfully. A morning in May with thoughts tripping over each other in confusion and hurt. A night in July where I think maybe I'll try to untangle it all, and decide that I don't know how. Not sure if untangling will be possible or help, or if they will really understand themselves enough to know what to say. An afternoon in October where I realize I've mostly forgiven but that it won't ever be the same.

This sounds dramatic and it wasn't really. In a life so blessed and rosy as mine, it was just a low point to learn that not all relationships can be kept the way I want them. That was obvious when I was younger, but hasn't been during my twenties when one assumes that friendships have become static and stable. And it's possible I've let people down in similar ways, and for that I am sorry.