The Autopsy of a Friendship

Morning is supposed to be renewal-at least for me. A clean slate, a chance to start over. A time for reflection and the opportunity to start over. At 5 a.m., in the cold quiet, there’s no noise to drown out the truth. No distractions to soften the blow. Just me, my coffee, and yesterday’s old self.

Today’s subject? A thirty-plus-year friendship that finally bled out.

People love to romanticize friendship. They call it sacred, unbreakable. Inspirational quotes about “true friends” fill their feeds. My personal favorite? “Soulmates,” sticking through thick and thin. But I’ve lived long enough to know better. Most friendships are transactional alliances. They are love in costume. Easy, convenient, and beneficial—until they’re not. Then they vanish, leaving you to wonder if they were real at all. Realizing this shaped how I eventually came to view my own friendship’s demise.

I thought I had the real thing. The once-in-a-lifetime friend. We had history—laughter, tears, secrets, drunken nights where the world outside didn’t matter. She was my refuge. My “soulmate,” she called me. I believed it because I wanted to.

But friendships don’t die in one dramatic explosion. They wither. Quietly. Subtly. Until one day, all you’re left with is a hollow shell that can’t even hold its own weight.

The first crack was so small I almost missed it. It came during a night out at a gay bar with her adult nephew—fun, harmless, forgettable. Of course, how would she know? She was past the point of no return. Another blacked-out, drunken episode. She doesn’t remember asking me to “watch” her nephew, because the family already believed he was gay. Except her family was not blacked out. They called every few minutes to check on their suspicions, telling him, “You will not meet any girls in a gay bar.” Her self-proclaimed “Christian” clan—so obsessed with perceived sin they can’t see their own failings—decided I was unwelcome. Overnight, I went from family-adjacent to persona non grata. And she? She didn’t fight for me. She didn’t defend me. She simply adjusted to their judgment. Like water taking the shape of any container it’s poured into. That night marked the beginning of being pushed out by the very person I thought accepted me.

But here’s the kicker. You just knew there would be one. Their moral high ground was a swamp. Her devoutly “Christian” family, the ones pointing fingers, were nothing more than a collection of drunks, whores, and whoremongers—hustling under the guise of purity, hiding their filth behind Bible verses. They condemned me to cover their own sins, and she went right along with it.

I noticed the missing invitations. The stories curated to show them as flawless saints, while the messy truths I used to hear were locked away. But I swallowed it. I played along. Because letting go of her felt like cutting off a limb.

So I sat through years of one-sided devotion. I was her sounding board, her confidant, her emotional landfill, and in all honesty, she was mine, to a degree, but I paid a heavy price. I bled, she fed. I hurt, she nodded. I drowned, she stayed dry. And I convinced myself this was love—because sometimes it’s easier to cling to a lie than face the void.

The end came with the precision of a samurai sword. I was at my lowest—lonely, unraveling, drinking excessively, desperate enough to ask for help. I called her. I asked her to visit. “Two hours away,” she said. “Too far.” Days later, I checked social media. She had driven almost as far to visit an ex. A washed-up pill-head back in the day, and the same one who drove my friend to financial ruin, threatened to "out" her to her family, threw knives at her-you get the picture. That’s when it hit me. I didn’t matter. Looking back, I probably never did. I was only there to keep her company in her own misery. As long as we did the safe things—stay in Ouachita Parish, drink ourselves into oblivion—we were golden. The thing is, I already suspected the truth. This was just another showing of who and what she is. A selfish, self-indulgent spectacle. A ridiculous ghost of a person.

When I did confront her, she lashed out, calling me a “fucking nut” and “mean-spirited.” Mean-spirited? I had to chuckle as if she had enough going on in the old noodle to use that phrase. Really, it was just another word stolen from some reality show, no doubt, but it stung all the same. But it also freed me. Her mask slipped. I saw the truth. She wasn’t my savior, my soulmate, my “ride or die.” She was a coward hiding behind family dogma, faux-Christian morality, and an ego too fragile for real intimacy.

And me? I wasn’t her victim. I was her accomplice. I enabled it. I let myself be drained dry because I was too afraid of standing alone.

Not anymore.

I finally started to see the grifter. The quiet, consistent con she threaded through her life. For over thirty years, she milked the system like a family heirloom. She collected a comfortable salary. She padded her time. She coasted, doing the bare minimum, enjoying Netflix from 8 to 4:30 as if it were part of the job. The minute she faced real work—real labor, accountability—she fell apart—a Broadway performance with the complimentary panic attacks and hyperventilating, all sprawled on the floor. It worked. Every time, she was relieved of responsibility. The system applauded and excused her. Every. Single. Time. This pattern was not limited to friendship; it bled into every aspect of her life.

And if any doubts remained about the depth of her self-focus, they’re erased by numerous examples. How she cared for her own parents. Encouraging their aging, ill parents to go to camp each summer, under the idea that “they’re happier there than staying home.” In truth, it was simply easier for them. Convenience was sometimes mistaken for compassion. The call from an old friend, down on her luck, needing a place to stay for a few nights. That request was met with a resounding "no". That friend committed suicide not too long after that.

Then, as fate would have it, the Daddy passed from this Earth. A fine man indeed. A fine, traditional Christian man who deserved a proper Christian burial. Instead, they cremated him because that is what they wanted—not what he would have chosen, not what his faith dictated. Then they had the gall to divide his ashes into laxative jars, like he was nothing more than pantry clutter to be portioned out. It was efficient, it was convenient, and above all, it was self-serving—precisely the way they lived every chapter of their lives.

Then came the mother’s demise. Instead of leaving her in the extraordinary facility she deserved, they shuffled her into a third-rate nursing home. It smelled of resignation and bleach. They whispered in her ear, “Would you rather be dead?” I wonder if, if she was fighting, hearing those words of encouragement, did she just stop? Maybe that was the point. Mercy by manipulation. My friend later told me her parents’ friends also accused her and her sister of misconduct when their mother died. Another grift—this one with a heartbeat.  

My friend bragged about driving used beaters, preaching that new cars were a waste of money—right up until the “death money” hit. Then, suddenly, a shiny upgrade appeared, justified with the sacred proclamation, “Momma would have wanted me to have one.” Another grift.

I heard she would troll my Facebook page, then share it with her ex-girlfriends, gossiping about how “fucked up” I was or what an “Asshole” I was. She told them I would call her drunk to show out. And I did, completely smashed, on two occasions, I did exactly that. And yes, I did lash out, and I texted the next day to apologize via Facebook Messenger. In my mind, no matter how low down and dirty she was, I was too good to behave that way. Too good to sink to her level, as cliché as it sounds. Even to the dregs of humanity. Looking back, I could see just how far we’d both fallen, and it cemented my decision to step away. After the second drunken text, it gave me the strength I needed to give up alcohol for good. And for that, I do express my gratitude to her.  

But this woman, this person, this individual that I loved more than myself finally showed me who and what she really was. You know, she never did anything beyond the survival instinct and manipulation—always taking, never giving; always receiving, never reciprocating. A grifter wrapped in a friend’s clothing, living high off systems and people she drained with the same effortless entitlement.

You may be thinking what a tragic ending to this love affair. But there’s a strange kind of power in losing something you thought you couldn’t live without. I buried that friendship. And she’s free to rot in her bubble of mediocrity and self-righteousness, and she will have her hollow followers who lack any real idea of who and what they are at her beck and call. You know the type. Those who morph into whoever is in the room. Those people with no sense of self. I call it the Munson Effect. And me? I’m free to demand more—from others, and from myself.

And make no mistake, this isn’t bitterness. This is awakening. The world is full of people like her—parasites disguised as companions, ready to latch onto anyone who will never challenge them. I won’t be that “anyone” ever again.

The truth is, I was just tired. Tired of her old bullshit. Tired of pretending. Tired of her Facebook food posts. Tired of the hollow narrative of her family’s so-called values. Tired of acting out the same tired scripts—CMT, greasy pizza, and the obligatory “See that redbird? That’s Daddy.” And I was just sick to death of her feigning a connection to the hereafter: the redbird as a celestial messenger, or the belief that turning on the car radio and hearing one of her parents’ favorite songs was some cosmic intervention. I’d nod politely while thinking, “Algorithms”, and I swelled with pity for her.

In the final analysis, that accumulation of minor irritations and endless performances became the last straw—the quiet, undeniable truth that it was time to move on.

Truth be known, I outgrew her. I needed depth; she required safety. I wanted real; she wanted easy, and I think she wanted me locked in a cage, along with her. And the moment I stepped away, I realized the cage was never locked. I had been holding the door shut myself, trying to protect a friendship that had already slipped past the point of no return. Walking away wasn’t the loss—it was the first breath of clean air I’d taken in decades. This final realization marked my actual transition from mourning to liberation.

And the lesson was brutally simple. Sometimes the heaviest weight isn’t what someone does to you—it’s what you allow in the name of loyalty. Once I set that down, everything that was supposed to stay stayed, and everything dead finally stopped pretending it was alive.

Funny thing is, the world didn’t end—the only thing that died was the illusion that I owed her anything. And once illusions die, they don’t come back. People do. I just chose not to let this one return.