Do you remember those friendship necklaces you used to get that were two halves of the same heart? Or when Bebo used to exist and the only painstakingly hard decisions you had to make were who was in your top 16 and who to share your three loves of the day with? These were the nature of female friendships when you’re a kid, which looking back now seemed oh so simple. You saw your friends every day at school, brimming with love and gossip over peanut butter sandwiches on the school field. I mean, it obviously wasn’t without its own teenage uneasiness but maintaining and navigating friendships as an adult is a whole different ballgame.

The things we value and prioritise of course change over the course of all of our lives, but something I didn’t really think about until recently is how this is then reflected in how friendships then have to adapt and change too. I’m definitely not the same person as I was at 18, and I’m sure my friends aren’t either. And this emotional distance, as well as living miles apart, is becoming more and more apparent. The awkward silences, which seem to hold so many unspoken words, have become much more noticeable. The unanswered texts and missed scheduled calls. That’s not even mentioning the natural drifting and growing apart that can happen after years of friendship. You cannot just coast along. Staying friends with people in adulthood requires dedicated time and energy, and in the sheer chaos that is your 20s, this can prove to be quite difficult sometimes. And now in a cost of living crisis? Please.

Maintaining a friendship is a two-way street, and I’ve definitely been known to let the side down, especially when I find myself in ball of stress and anxiety. A feeling that has been quite a familiar one this year. The sound of my phone pinging or seeing the red little number on the WhatsApp icon can sometimes make me want to throw my phone deep into the ocean and go into my little hole of silence for weeks on end. The loneliness then inevitably hits you like a tonne of bricks but you know that you are probably partly to blame as you’ve been airing your friends for weeks. And the spiralling begins. Do my friends still love me? Do they still want to hang out with me? Or are they still friends with me out of a sense of obligation?

And the thing about spiralling anxiety is that I become a very selfish person. It's as if I've developed blinders to anything but my own feelings. I forget that others have just as busy and stressful lives as myself. Circumstances that might prevent them from picking up the phone or sending a text. The saying has never been more true, you never truly know what’s going on behind closed doors. Something that I’m really trying to remember and hold on to.

Female friendships are messy, passionate and beautiful and my word are they some of the most important relationships in my life. But I think it’s also important to know when some friendships have come to an end. An acknowledgement that I'm trying to reflect and work on myself. This doesn't have to be because of anything in particular or involve shouting matches, it can be simply because you've outgrown each other and are following different roads in life. And that's okay.