November definitely had a lot of developments – both good and awful.

On the positive side, I finally got a negative/normal result on my pap smear. It had been 6 months post-LEEP procedure. I just need another negative/normal on my 1-year follow-up and I can finally be at peace regarding my reproductive health for the first time in 3 years. Receiving an abnormal pap smear / positive HPV result is not necessarily uncommon for women. HPV is the most common STI amongst women and usually our immune systems are able to fight off the infection within 2 years. I had a positive, negative, and positive again over the course of 2.5 years, so I was especially concerned. I thought my body had fought it off only for it to come back again, meaning maybe I was one of the statistics in which HPV isn’t just nothing. Or the negative I received in between was a false negative, or my body did fight off the infection but I got re-infected – there are so many possibilities and there’s no way to test or know how the infection progressed. There’s also no way test for HPV in asymptomatic men so all men are assumed to be carriers (said my doctor). HPV hardly affects men unless it’s in the unfortunate areas of infection like the throat. HPV mostly affects the cervix, so once again – women get the short end of the stick.

Back to positives. I started dating someone that I had originally met from college and things are going well – except we have differences in our life goals (AKA children). So that’s our crux, but we’re just here to enjoy the ride until either of us are ready to begin looking for our life partner.

On the negative side, I lost a best friend of 11 years. Don’t worry, he didn’t die. I noticed I hadn’t been able to contact him over the course of a week – my texts weren’t going through, my calls were going straight to voicemail, and all of his social media was deactivated. I asked a friend to confirm that his social media was deactivated and I wasn’t just blocked and it was deactivated; however, it was only my calls and texts being blocked. Over the span of 11 years, we had never gotten into an argument – at least not any major ones that I can recall – so this was completely out of the blue. It was like he completely disappeared. I became extremely concerned that I couldn’t contact him and thought to myself that maybe he only blocked my contact methods because he was going to do something stupid and didn’t want me to stop him – immediate worst case scenario thoughts. So I ended up contacted his local police department and requesting a welfare check just to make sure he was at least okay. Maybe an overreaction, but this was unprecedented and I am aware of our similar struggles with mental health.

Shortly after the welfare check was conducted, he finally messaged me and told me he no longer wanted to be friends. After 11 years of being best friends with no prior falling outs, just done. Over. Finished. With not much of an explanation besides our friendship is draining to him and a “it’s not you, it’s me” scenario.

I was completely blindsided and I went through the rest of the day basically in shock. I was still at work when I got his message, and I couldn’t fall apart at work. When I got home from work that day, I bawled. Full-on ugly crying and wailing. And then after about an hour, I was okay.

The next day, I took all of the gifts he had given me over the years and put them somewhere out of sight. I still haven’t mustered the courage to actually toss any of the things out because they were all really heartfelt gifts. How can someone go from being your #1 unconditional supporter to no longer wanting anything to do with you? From writing paragraphs-long messages every year on my birthday about how grateful he was to have me in his life and how much I’ve helped him through our friendship to just silence. This all happened about 10 days before my birthday, too. So I went through the grief cycle all over again on my birthday, not receiving one of his sentimental messages as per usual each birthday. The last gift he had given me last year was a shiny Umbreon plush, which came with the message of, “For one, you love Umbreon obviously, but I chose the shiny one because you’re one of a kind and so special to me…” etc. Previous birthday presents included a copy of a game we first bonded over and his original childhood GameBoy and games.

I haven’t streamed since our falling out because I used to always stream only when he was also available so that he could moderate my stream for me while I played and helped me out with my settings. I haven’t faced streaming again without him yet. It was one of my ways to spend quality time with him.

And I’ve been avoiding really processing everything because I knew it was going to be emotionally heavy. Which is why this post is coming two months after the fact. But surprisingly, I don’t feel anything. I think I was able to process a majority of my grief on the day of and afterwards when I removed all of his gifts. There are still days here and there where he’ll cross my mind, but there’s nothing I can do about it. So it crosses my mind, I feel the grief, and I let it go. And over time, the process becomes shorter in length. I don’t want to say grief gets easier over time, but over time, you do learn how to process it better and quicker. There’s nothing really easy about experiencing negative emotions. You just have to let the process take place. Don’t deny the feelings; give yourself grace; let yourself feel; let the feelings wash over you and then let them go. The only way to get through tough feelings is to go through them. There’s no way to avoid it or get around it or somehow hack your way around processing feelings. Plus, it’ll benefit you in the end anyway because you’ll learn what you need to self-soothe and cope – or what doesn’t work for you. You just need to make sure you have the appropriate time and space to process these moments. Or at least – that’s what has worked for me.