The friend who disappeared, and the one who showed up

When I was diagnosed, I made a list of people I needed to tell. It was a strange exercise, sitting at my kitchen table with a notebook, ranking my relationships by who deserved to hear it from me directly. Family first. Then my closest friends. Then work. Then everyone else, who would find out eventually through some combination of group texts and rumor.

Near the top of the list was Leah. We'd been best friends since grade nine. She was the one who'd driven three hours to pick me up after a terrible breakup, who'd been the maid of honor at my sister's wedding because she was basically family. If anyone was going to be there for me, it was Leah.

Near the bottom of the list was Priya, a woman I'd known for about a year from a weekly running group. We got coffee sometimes. I liked her. I didn't think of her as a close friend.

You probably know where this is going.

The one who disappeared

Leah was devastated when I told her. She cried on the phone. She said all the right things. She promised to come visit that weekend.

She didn't come that weekend. She texted to say something came up. The next week, she sent flowers. The week after that, a funny meme. Then the texts got further apart. When I tried to call, it went to voicemail. When we did talk, she'd change the subject quickly, asking about my sister or my cat, anything but how I was doing.

By month four of treatment, I hadn't seen her in person once.

I was so angry. Then I was hurt. Then I was angry again, and then I started wondering if I'd done something wrong. Maybe I'd been too much. Maybe I'd overshared. Maybe she was just busy, and I was being unfair.

It took me a long time to understand that her disappearing wasn't really about me.

The one who showed up

Priya, meanwhile, texted me a week after I stopped coming to running group. “Hey, noticed you've been gone. Everything okay?”

I told her, briefly, expecting a polite response. Instead she wrote back, “That's awful. I'm so sorry. I'm going to drop off soup on Tuesday, is that okay? You don't have to see me, I'll leave it at the door.”

She dropped off soup that Tuesday, and the next Tuesday, and the one after that. Eventually I started opening the door. Then she started coming in. She'd sit on my couch and tell me about her terrible coworkers and her dating disasters, and she never once made me feel like I had to perform being okay.

When I didn't feel like talking, she'd put on a movie. When I cried, she'd hand me tissues without saying anything profound. When my hair started falling out, she came over with clippers and a bottle of cheap champagne and we made a night of it.

The people who show up aren't always the ones you'd have picked. Sometimes they're the ones who were quietly paying attention all along.

What I've come to understand

I've spent a lot of time thinking about why Leah disappeared and Priya didn't. I don't think it's because Priya loved me more. She barely knew me.

I think, for Leah, my illness hit too close. She'd lost her mom to cancer when we were in university. I'd been there for her then. Maybe seeing me sick brought it all back. Maybe she couldn't stand to watch it happen again. Maybe she didn't know how to show up without falling apart, so she didn't show up at all.

That doesn't make it okay. It still hurt. It still hurts, some days. But understanding it made it a little less personal.

And Priya? I asked her once, months later, why she'd kept coming. She shrugged and said, “My aunt went through it. She told me the worst part was how lonely it got. I figured soup was the least I could do.”

Sometimes people show up because of their history. Sometimes people disappear because of theirs.

What happened next

About a year after my treatment ended, Leah reached out. She wrote me a long email, apologizing. She said she'd been in therapy. She said she'd been ashamed of how she'd acted and hadn't known how to come back.

I didn't respond for two weeks. I didn't know what I wanted. Part of me wanted to forgive her immediately and pretend none of it had happened. Part of me wanted to never speak to her again.

Eventually, I wrote back. I told her I was glad she'd reached out and that I'd been really hurt. I told her I wasn't sure what our friendship looked like now, but I was willing to find out.

We're friends again. It's different than before, a little more careful, a little more honest. We've had some hard conversations. There are still things I don't tell her that I'd tell Priya. I've accepted that.

If your friendships are shifting

If you're watching your circle rearrange itself, I want you to know that it's incredibly common, and it's not a reflection of your worth.

Some people will disappear. It might be someone you never expected. It will hurt, and you're allowed to be angry about it. You don't have to understand them or forgive them on any particular timeline. Some friendships end during hard times and don't come back. That's a real loss, and it's worth grieving.

Some people will surprise you. A coworker, a neighbor, a friend of a friend, someone from an online group. Let them in, if you can. You don't owe them a lifelong friendship, but you might find one.

And if you're the one who disappeared on someone, if you're reading this and recognizing yourself in Leah, it's not too late to reach out. You don't need a perfect apology. Just an honest one.

Priya and I still run together on Saturday mornings. I'm slower than I used to be. She waits for me at the corners without making a thing of it. That's what friendship looks like to me now. Not grand gestures. Just someone who keeps showing up, at whatever pace you can manage.

This is a personal essay, not medical advice. If something here brings up a lot, be gentle with yourself.