Episode 60 - From Best Friend to Ex-Friend: When Friendships Fall Apart
HANNAH: In a previous conversation, you talked about it a little bit, but I do want to hear a bit more about your experience in kind of losing a friendship and missing a friend who's still alive.
SYDNEY: Yeah, absolutely. It is a very interesting type of grief. I had a best friend that I met in kindergarten, and we became kind of attached at the hip, like our names even rhymed. We went to camp together, Emily and Sydney. And I grew very close with her entire family, and we were very good friends. She was kind of my person for nine years.
So starting going into, it's a very long time. It was very much, her friendship was very much tied into my identity as a person, like always just being Emily's best friend or Emily being my best friend. And it's not that I didn't have other friends. We had a lot of mutual friends, but we were a pretty core pair. And we got into high school in freshman year. She just kind of, her behavior toward me kind of started to change.
She started to kind of pull back a lot of unanswered text messages in Facebook comments, back when you used to post on each other's walls on Facebook.
Yeah, like, hey, what are you doing on Friday? I'm like, I should just text you.
HANNAH: It's like a public text message thread.
SYDNEY: Cool, let's let everybody else know that we're seeing the fifth Harry Potter movie again on Friday. And yeah, so starting within that freshman year, she just didn't want to, was avoiding kind of hanging out with me, would post on my Facebook but then not respond to me, just would avoid any and all attempt for me to spend time with her. With really no explanation, so I'm just kind of floating around, like “who am I?” in high school.
And then this one person who had always been with me, very much part of my identity, was not there anymore. And I, starting around eighth grade, had already started to really, I probably had it for a very long time, but started to realize I had a lot of struggles with anxiety and depression. So then like moving into that and then like losing a best friend.
Freshman year of high school was not my favorite year of life. That was not a fun year. So like, I kind of don't see her or talk to her as much. And then I remember in like February, or maybe like early spring of that year, she finally had reached out and decided like, oh, we should like talk to each other. I think it was like that February, she finally let me talk to her. And she kind of came in—I remember it was at her house and was like, “I don't like the way that you treat people. I think you worry too much. And I think you overthink too much. And if you don't change your behavior, then I can't be friends with you anymore.”
And she told me I overanalyze things too much. And that is what I was in therapy for at the time of being like, hey, I like catastrophize and I overthink. And a lot of my behavior was born out of untreated and diagnosed mental illness. So yeah, and she came in so confident, like it's very funny to think about it most recently because of, I don't know if you've paid attention at all to the Jonah Hill text messages.
HANNAH: Yes, I was just about to talk about that, that that's not a real boundary.
SYDNEY: Yeah, I'm making that connection in real time as well of saying like, these are things that it's one thing to say like, “I don't think you treat me well.” I mean, I get it. Like I've been told also, although another friend has since said she regrets saying this to me, but like I lacked a certain empathy when I was a kid. I was just high energy, my way, the highway. I want to share every like and I, you know, like it's hard to stop and think about how, you know, be like “you have to be a Harry Potter fan because I'm a Harry Potter fan.”
“It's like Sydney, we might not want to be a Harry Potter fan,” but I'm like, “no, you have to be because I am,” you know, like I was probably a pretty intense, anxious kid. And so I mean, it's who I was. And she just kind of laid down these like rules of just saying like, I could accept maybe I didn't treat you very well, but like you overthink too much, you overanalyze, and I don't like it.
And we kind of parted ways, I guess, to be like, okay, Sydney, figure out how you're going to be better. And it's not like she made an effort to see me afterward. And I think it was like, April of that year. Yeah, because the first talk was in February, and then we had another friend talk in April. And she again comes in with this speech and I'm in a better place. I had been starting to go to therapy. The weather was getting nicer. I have really terrible like seasonal effective disorder.
So I was like, baby, like, okay, I just joined the debate team, riding high. And she starts her new speech of like, now that we have seen that we can live without each other, but we don't want to live without each other. And she said that and I immediately felt my entire posture shift away of like, “what do you mean I can live without you?”
I turned in tear stained homework every week because you like not like, oh, you ruined my life, but like you kind of ruined my life. Like, you know, I don't want to put like so much onus on just like one person. There's a lot of factors. But she made it seem like she was completely fine without me, you know, like we can live without each other, but we don't want to. I'm like, “oh, my life ended.” And so like something in that moment of her saying that to me, I kind of realized that the friend I once had is never coming back.
And I wasn't really the same either. So yeah, there was a very, very intense sense of loss. I kind of lost her over that whole year. It was just being very dragged out. She and my like our entire families were very close. Her brother had a pretty terrible genetic disease that he had from birth and was in the hospital really frequently and could at times be very visibly sick. So she had a really difficult home life. And I was always like, come stay at my house, but like he would be in the hospital for like six months at a time. A really intense disease.
And so like my family kind of became a bit of a surrogate family for her if that ever happened. I kind of gave any opportunity to research something in school I always picked the disease that he had because I wanted to learn more about it and support her. I wanted to just let her know that she wasn't A, the girl with a sick brother. I wanted to provide any type of normalcy that I could for her at any time. And then I had to go to high school with her for the next three years.
HANNAH: And you didn't talk anymore?
SYDNEY: No, we would ignore each other in the hallway.
HANNAH: Oh, no.
SYDNEY: Yeah, because we even left that conversation of like, yeah, we'll be friends. But I knew the friendship was not there anymore. And there was actually one friend that I had who I kind of told who knew Emily, and I was like, this is kind of what she said to me, like listing all the things that she didn't like. And this particular friend, the sweetest gesture, she made a list of all the 40 things she loved about me and printed it out and gave it to me. And it was the sweetest shout out to Jesse, if you're out there listening.
That was the best thing you could have done. It was so sweet. And I'm still like friends with Emily on Facebook. And it's a really weird sensation to look at her life and know so much of the first of those nine years. And then see kind of like who she... And I don’t have any idea who she grew up to be, really, in terms of her personality. Like I can look at pictures, but I have no idea what's going on in her life. I know she got married. And even weirder, like kind of very full circle, the partner that I'm currently with, Connor, his college girlfriend was best friends with Emily. So when we met, she was like the one mutual friend we had on Facebook.
HANNAH: That's bonkers.
SYDNEY: Oh, how do you... Yeah, like how do you know her? And it worked out great. Because neither of us were still friends with her or anything like that, but it was wild.
HANNAH: That is wild.
SYDNEY: Because everybody knows. Yeah, his ex-girlfriend knows. Apparently, Emily had told his ex-girlfriend that I was really clingy.
HANNAH: What?
SYDNEY: Yeah, because you were my best friend. And you broke my heart. Yeah, that was really weird to hear her say, like, “\oh, I was really clingy. Cool. You were my best friend.
HANNAH: Oh, my gosh. I have so many thoughts and feelings and questions.
SYDNEY: Hit me with them. Yeah, it's a really interesting feeling, because nobody really talks about. That was my real first heartbreak. Friend loss is real loss.
HANNAH: Oh, yes, absolutely.
SYDNEY: I mean, any type of loss of a friend, yeah.
HANNAH: Absolutely. And when you were talking about how she approached you, first of all, I want to do a caveat that like y'all were young and, you know, maybe things weren't approached in the best way by her. But like when you said the word speech, that she gave you a speech that like rubbed me the wrong way, because I was like, instead of it being like a conversation, like, “let's talk about this,” it was like, “I am going to pontificate at you all the things you're doing, quote unquote, wrong, and my quote unquote boundaries,” which I don't know if you want to give context about the Jonah Hill thing for anyone who doesn't know what that is, because it does remind me of that.
SYDNEY: Absolutely. So Jonah Hill, douchebag. I can't say I won't bring in my own personal feelings. So, you know, as a warning, I'm not going to be objective, but I will give you the facts. He, in a recent relationship with a woman named Sarah Brady, he made these requests of her, calling them “boundaries.” Sarah Brady is a surfer, semi-pro, or at least an instructor.
She makes some kind of living from surfing. I don't know if she fully competes yet at this point. She's also in law school. So he had made some requests of her while they were dating, saying that she can't post swimsuit pictures on Instagram and actually asked her to take down certain ones, said that she should not have friendships with “unstable women” beyond getting lunch or coffee, cannot be surfing with men, just can't be taking pictures with men, and just like a lot of things, find a beach where there isn't a man surfing. So he labels them as boundaries. These are my boundaries with a partner.
“If you don't understand that, then you're just simply not meant to be with me. Then I'm not the right partner for you.” And that's just the wrong use of the word boundaries. Those are rules and attempts at control. And so very similarly, boundaries are things that you can control of what you do. My boundary is when you're drinking, I don't want to be around. So I'm not going to tell you not to, but I just don't want to be around alcohol. That's a boundary for me. Or like, I hate seafood, so you can go to sushi, but that's a boundary for me.
I don't like sushi. A boundary is not, “I don't like sushi so you can't eat it.” Because it's not your body. It's not something that you can control. And so what feels really similar about what my friend had said to me is like, it's something that she cannot control, is how I think, how I analyze things, how I worry. It was overanalyze, overthink, and worry too much. That's, there we go. I am medicated for that shit now, so who missed out?
Could have just held on for a couple more years. But yeah, it's just not great friendship or any type of relationship etiquette to try and dictate somebody else's behavior or thought process. If they have an overactive mind, maybe don't tell them to stop thinking in certain ways. But yeah, it was a really wild approach, and even my family had gotten really close with her family, and our moms were very close. And after she had said that, kind of ended our friendship, and I was very open with my mother. I told her everything Emily said to me. She could not be friends with her mom anymore.
HANNAH: Oh, no.
SYDNEY: She's like, “how could you,” it was just painful, because obviously she knows that her daughter's decisions are different than her own, but from my mom's perspective, it was like, how could you let your daughter say those things. If Emily even had gone to like her mom and had like a question, or it was like, “this is what I want to say to Sydney.”
“Sounds good. I think you should approach it that way.” And so it kind of rifted even their friendship. I mean, it really sucks. But I felt very defended by my mom, especially as a little 14 year old of like, “hell yeah, mom.” So yeah, I really appreciated her taking that approach, but my friend did not have a good approach on her end.
HANNAH: Yeah, and I'm even trying to think like, like, let's say my friend's anxieties stress me out, and like they affect my mental health, which can be a real thing. A better way to approach it, I feel like, would be to have a conversation about it and be like, maybe when you're stressing out, like, I can't always take that load. So maybe ask if I'm in the right headspace to vent to, or like, I don't know, and then like discuss it together, and figure it out. But like, yeah, saying like, I mean, it's hard. It is hard. I'm not trying to defend what she did by any means, but.
SYDNEY: Oh, no, I mean, it's not like I really like blame her too much, because she was also 14. So a lot of the pain that I have is not so much directed at her. Like, oh, you're a, you know, you're a bitch. I don't really have a desire to like, part of me kind of just wants her to know who I became, because I'm insanely different than when I was as a kid. And it's just such a weird feeling because I always imagined being her, you know, her maid of honor.
Or even just being at her wedding. And it's kind of all the, you put like investment into someone to have like a lifelong friendship, and then you lose that possibility. And I haven't so much thought about it as much now, but it definitely hung over most of high school for me.
HANNAH: When you're young, especially, you really do think that these relationships will last forever. And I feel like that's some of the first times, especially those moments of, I don't know why I call it severing, like the severing between childhood and adolescence, and the severing between adolescence and adulthood. Like we see things start to die. And did you by chance see the movie Close? It was about these two boys. It was at the Music Box Theatre. These two boys were friends
SYDNEY: Was it a foreign film?”
HANNAH: Yes, I think it was French. Because they spoke French.
SYDNEY: Yeah, then I've heard of it, but I did not see it.
HANNAH: Okay, yeah, because that was very much about the severing between childhood and adolescence. And they were so close, like the best of friends. I mean, he was basically a brother. Like he would spend all his time with them. The mother was like a second mother. And then one of them started to pull away and kind of ghost the other friend. And the other friend was just like, “what is happening?” He was like, “why are you pulling away from me? We're best friends. Like what?” And it was, I cried so hard. Oh, yeah. It was so painful. And it's just like, yeah, it's just a representation of that. And I didn't have the same experience as you, but just similar in that like I was like, “what? But I thought we were best friends. Like, why are we not close anymore? You know?” It's really painful.
SYDNEY: It is. And it's very interesting that most people view grief as something like you just mourn things that you had. And what I think is really helpful to reframe about that is you're also mourning the future you wanted to have. Like, there's a lot of people, like I have a friend who is going through a very hard breakup, and it's been like a little over a year, and it just kind of rocks their shit, you know? And, you know, they are consistently getting feedback of like, “you should be over it by now.” Oh, like, “it's time to move on.”
And I just so refuse to be that person, you're on your own timeline, I wasn't in that relationship, and there's also the idea that like she thought they thought they were going to be with that person for a really long time. And so now, it's like reframing the rest of your life, because a huge very big centerpiece was just taken out. And so even something as small as like, we were gonna go to Texas to go on like a vacation together, that's a loss of something that you planned to have, and it's not there anymore. And that's, it causes a lot of dissonance within a person, because you don't mourn just what you had. But like, now you have to think about all the things that you have to do without them. And that's really heavy.
HANNAH: It is.
SYDNEY: I think that there's still that other side of grief that people just don't really want to make room for, or at least as my friend’s friends don't want to make room for them, of like, you mourn a future, or when people get upset if they saw someone for a couple of months, and then they break up and you know, it's hard to get over. So yeah, because you were hoping for a future, you also have to hold emotional space for that, not just because you were holding space for them, you're not going to be able to make.
HANNAH: I mean, there are some friendships that last an entire lifetime. I personally have not had one that started from kindergarten till now.
SYDNEY: I've got one still going.
HANNAH: Really?
SYDNEY: I got one. Yeah, I got one.
HANNAH: Oh my gosh. That's amazing. I'm jealous, but also happy for you.
SYDNEY: Well, it feels like, people are like day ones, you know? Like, I don't have day ones. I have one day one, and her name is Haley. Like, that's it, you know? I get friends with a lot of people that have Y's in their names. But yeah, she's, I knew her, I think just as long as I knew Emily, and they were also friends. But we've stayed in contact, yeah.
It is, you kind of feel like they're, especially what you see in movies and stuff like that, where I always think about Broad City, even watching Broad City, I was like, oh, that could have been me and Emily, and kind of mourning that. I cried at the end of Broad City, but not for the reasons you think. It was more of like, “why don't I have a longstanding friendship.” But you change a lot, and I've changed a lot as I've grown as a person. So then my friends should probably also change. Or it's at least logical that friends change, yeah.
HANNAH: Friendships change, you get different friends, but also maybe you can both change together. And I think both are possible. And maybe the changing just doesn't match up anymore, and then, and that's okay, too. It's complicated, there's so much behind it. But I also cried, I think I cried even harder for Pen15, the last episode I cried so hard, and would be so sad because I was like, “gosh, I don't have a friendship like that.” Because in that show, they were friends since they were like three or four or something. And I was like, why don't I have that? I want that, is there something wrong with me that I don't have that? Yeah, so that I felt similarly.
SYDNEY: There's nothing wrong with you. Yeah, it's weird. There's not, we don't talk enough, I think, anywhere about interpersonal relationships, or what's normal, or how to make long-term friends, or how to break up with a friend, which is a totally normal thing to do. Maybe just be nicer about it when you do it.
Yeah, and it's interesting, because there's definitely been friends that I have wanted to, quote-unquote, break up with since, and I one thing that felt kind of so betraying about that situation is she very clearly had thought this out for a really long time. I don't think that this was something she decided upon one day. I think it's something that she noticed over a number of years and didn't say anything to me. And so that hurts within itself of like, if something is wrong, please tell me, or I'm just gonna keep doing it and then keep hurting you.
So then whose fault is, it's just, I think there is some responsibility within relationships and friendships that if something is wrong, you have to trust it enough to talk it out, or say it before you decide it's too much and have to leave, and there's nothing that can be done for the other person.
HANNAH: Yeah, and I think that you're right, we're not taught that. And that's like what we talked about last time when you were saying that you had that really mature conversation with a friend and you drank margaritas and we're like, let's figure this out. And you're still friends, it's a success story. It can work.
SYDNEY: I know. You can talk about the hard stuff with your friends and then still be at their wedding later in life.
HANNAH: Aw. Have you ever had the desire to reach out to Emily?
SYDNEY: Yeah, all the time. I've definitely had that. We've kind of exchanged messages more so via Facebook comment. It was a lot during 2020 and she kind of posted a lot. And we were very much ideologically aligned. And she was...So we would kind of comment of like, that was screw the Supreme Court or whatever. I don't know if anything was happening with the Supreme Court back then. Or posting about Biden for the 2020 election.
So there's been little moments like that. I don't know if I would really approach her saying, hey, I miss what we have, because I don't think I do anymore. Like her in particular, I have just found very, very deep and meaningful friendships in other ways and other avenues that weren't hers. So I've kind of been able to heal, I think a bit of that part of my experience myself. I am more curious, honestly, to ask her if she understands what she did. And I would not want that to come off in an evil way of like, “do you know what you did to me?”
But of just like, “hey, do you, like do you by chance feel a little bad? Is there any, like is there any part of you that looks back and regrets what you did?” Whether it's wanting to have stayed my friend, which that's not something I think I need to hear. Like, people change. We went out, you know, like she joined choir and like found her, she seems very happy. Like if I wasn't going to be the best friend for her, then I don't want to bring somebody down, and I don't want to spend time with someone if they don't want to spend time with me.
But I am, I am very, I am particularly curious of like how, do you ever think about me? You know, like do you, did I mean to you what you meant to me? And how did the end of our friendship actually impact you? Because I don't really have a window into that. She made a ton of other friends. But yeah, and there was one time in high school that we ended up in the same room alone together.
We were like interviewing people for this program, and it was the most awkward like five minutes of silence in my life. Oh, no. I'm like, “cool, like I still know your birthday.” I'm like, “I still know everything about you, but whatever.” And at one point I had written, I think I shared it with you too, I had written a kind of essay about it, and about what it is to be able to “stalk” your ex-best friend on Facebook, you know, just to be like, “oh, she just got married.” Like, I remember when I thought I'd be a bridesmaid or something, you know, like, it's very odd, because it gives so much to your imagination of what their life is like versus, you know, you don't have to think about them or ideate at all, you know. They can stay, that, you know, 14-year-old.
It's just such an interesting position to be in, because I could find out if I wanted to, but that's also a whole other social awkward interaction to deal with. And then there's also always the possibility of running into them, which happens a lot in Chicago, of just running into people, you know, which I've been lucky enough that I haven't run into her at all. But yeah, it's just a weird, like a weird living ghost is really kind of what it feels like.
HANNAH: Yeah, it's a death that's not a literal death. Do you still feel like hurt about it when you think about it? Like, is the emotion still raw or is it kind of healed over?
SYDNEY: No, I did go and work on all of the things that she said were wrong with me. Not necessarily because of what she said, it was already something I wanted to address on my own, for my own health. But it doesn't, I mean, I can still very much recognize that it was like a painful experience, but I feel like she cannot hurt me in any way further. Did that make sense? Even thinking about now how she told Connor's ex-girlfriend like, “oh yeah, good luck, she's really clingy.” Okay, “you know, I live with him. We have two cats. I think he's happy. Maybe I'm not so clingy.” And it was weird that she even thought it would be okay to say something about me.
HANNAH: That is bizarre to me. I'm sorry. Yeah, that's weird.
SYDNEY: You don't know me anymore.
HANNAH: I am probably clingy, but I think I just love really hard, you know? And it's like, so is clingy necessarily a bad thing?
SYDNEY: Same. Yeah, I love very hard. If I like you, I want to keep you around. Life is short. Like, I don't feel like losing somebody if I enjoy being around them. Because usually there isn't so much of like a very clean break with a friend. Usually it is a little weirder, but mine was very straightforward.
HANNAH: Yeah, I feel like it's not uncommon for friends to just kind of sort of ghost each other, like drift apart, because it is like an awkward no man's land of like, how do you break up with a friend? So it just becomes this weird, slow, painful process.
SYDNEY: And like with withholding or being withholding, like not answering text messages, or like kind of ghosting within relationships, is a form of abuse. That is something that abusers will use. So like the feeling of not getting a text back, although it feels really silly and desperate, “like please text me back.” Withholding, this is more so if it's purposeful, really kind of messes with your brain. Like if you were to say something to me and I were to just be silent and stare at you and not say anything and not respond.
It's like, is the silent treatment or the cold shoulder, but even just not getting a response to a text message, that's not how our brains are wired for communication. It's like we're used to it being instantaneous. So it causes that anxiety. Not to say you have to answer every text message you get ever right when you get it, it's fine. There's too much availability there. But very much in the context of relationships like that.
HANNAH: Context matters a lot because I have some friends who are just. text messaging is just not their main form of communication. Sometimes they just don't text back or take some days or weeks. And I don't take it personally, because I know that's how they are. But it's different if it's, like you said, purposeful, it's like the silent treatment or the cold shoulder. And I am also more on the anxious side, like you were saying about your personality, I'm anxious. I would describe myself as clingy, and I hold back, in most friendships I hold back because I'm petrified of appearing clingy or too much, so there's probably just a small handful of friends that I feel like I can be my full self around. Otherwise, I'm like, I will love them too hard, and it will scare them, and you know, like...
SYDNEY: And they're gonna run away.
HANNAH: Exactly, yeah. Yeah. My friend who passed away might have been the first friend who reciprocated my intensity the same amount, if not even surpassed it, which is one reason why it was so special is because it was like, oh, I can be super intense, and it even allowed me to be even more intense, you know, because she was more intense, and then it was very freeing. I was like, oh, I don't have to worry about being too much around her, and that's a big deal, I think.
SYDNEY: Yeah, if somebody says that you're too much, then they should just go find less.
HANNAH: That's a quote, isn't it, that people say?
SYDNEY: Yes, Elise Myers. Yeah, I think that's Elise Myers, who's on Instagram. That's definitely one of her like taglines, which I love, because I'm also a lot. Yeah, it's just, it's very difficult to lose someone that you really felt like yourself around or having almost like kind of completing the other parts of you. It just magnifies the loss that much more.
HANNAH: Yeah, it really does. I heard this story that someone told about their kid, who's maybe like, I don't know, five or six. And this kid had like speech pathology, not lessons, but whatever you call them, sessions. And she would tell her speech pathologist, “I love you, goodbye, I love you.” And one time her speech pathologist said, “you know, you don't actually love me, you just like me. You can't say I love you to someone like me.”
And it's like, so from children, we are taught to push our love down. When like, she did love her. And it's like, we're probably not always taught, said it that explicitly, like sometimes we are. But in other ways, it's like, love is seen as sometimes inappropriate or too much. And that we shouldn't love our therapist and our speech pathologist and our teacher and our, you know, whatever, we should just love our family and maybe some friends but like, that love is just pushed down and pushed down and pushed down until we just have to like, so mean, project that love.
SYDNEY: That makes me so sad. And we should be able to like, it should be normalized to express love with people that aren't just direct blood family members or your like romantic partners. And it's just like that story you told just reminded me of one time I was leaving my therapist office when I was in college and a whole other story for another podcast, but I was in therapy for an abusive relationship that I was in. And so what I was talking about with that therapist was very emotionally heightened. And I'm like leaving his office crying and the way that he opened the door, it kind of looked like he was going to hug me.
And so I'm like, oh god, yes, that's what I want. And I lean in for a hug, but he was just opening the door. And I'm like, oh, lost my shit, like left the thing. And he's like such a good therapist. I hear him like, “Sydney.” He calls me back. And I'm like, oh god, are you going to say something about that? And he's like, “you are more than welcome to a hug if you would like one.” And I'm like, “I would love one.”
So that's how you should respond if somebody shows you an expression of love that you weren't ready for is like, you can take a beat to think about it. Like, oh crap, she probably feels sad. And I just so appreciated that he didn't just let me go and live with that feeling, which now I'm just thinking about that child who was just like, let to go. “No, you don't love me. Goodbye.” It's a terrible way to leave.
HANNAH: I know. Probably broke that kid's heart.
SYDNEY: I know, like what even? That child is never saying I love you to anybody else now. Like, no.
HANNAH: Even to this day, I hold back saying I love you to friends, because again, I’m like, worried about making them uncomfortable. And it's a little bit of a foreign thing. Like, it feels weird coming out of my mouth when I say I love you to friends, because it's just not something I say a lot. And the other day, I had coffee with a friend. And when we were saying goodbye, she was like, “bye, I love you.” And I was just like, like, it shocked me to my core. And I was just like, “love you too!” And I said it back, and I remember it feeling so weird coming out of my mouth, like, very unusual. But it was like, I almost wanted to cry a little bit. It was so sweet how she said that. I don't say that enough.
SYDNEY: Yeah, we should just tell all the people that we love that we love them all the time. I try at the end of phone calls to be really particular if I'm talking to someone that I love, not, like, a random person, but to end it saying, “I love you.” Really pointed, I try to, because it is uncomfortable, and I try to be very pointed, say, “I love you.” And I even made my dad, he's more of a “you too, babe” type of person, I'm like, “dad, I need you to say it to me.” Because it's nice to hear, even if you know it, it's just nice to hear.
HANNAH: Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. I think it's important to talk about grief of friends who are still alive, because I think that's shoved under the rug in our society.