'I Was Ghosted by My Best Friend'

I met Lindsay at UCLA on a sunny day in January, 1985. Although we were in the same sorority, we were in different friendship groups, so we had never spoken. I knew her only by sight.

During our first encounter, she was presiding over a table in the leafy North Campus quad. All the chairs around her were taken, and several more students were gathered around. I hastily ditched my food tray and approached the table to hear what she was saying.

"In-fil-trate," Lindsay said, emphasizing each syllable with a corresponding fist pound on the wooden table. She was insisting that we should all infiltrate new and different friendship groups. I think this was her way of speaking out against cliques.

I agreed with what she was saying and I surprised myself by interjecting, "I'm with you. Let's do it."

Startled, Lindsay looked up in my direction, giving me what I would later call her Cheshire cat smile. It was then that I knew she was someone I wanted to befriend. So, as she got up from her seat, I sidled over and asked if she wanted to meet for coffee the next morning.

"Absolutely," she said.

And just like that, an incredible friendship was born.

Our friendship

Lindsay and I became inseparable. We roomed together, went out together, and, after graduation, we lived and traveled together. We knew each other's habits and idiosyncrasies. Lindsay was an avid speed-walker. When she was working out a problem, she would keep walking—à la Forrest Gump—until she came up with her answer.

Lindsay was also a slave to fashion. Before a big party, she would shop for the killer outfit, wear it with inimitable style, and then return it the next day with tags still attached. I admired her chutzpah.

In fact, while appearing on a game show my senior year—one of my more unorthodox strategies to amass the funds needed to pay for a graduate degree in journalism—I answered a question, referencing the practice of women returning clothes after wearing them. The game show host feigned mock surprise, the audience tittered, and my stomach began to crawl with dread. Would Lindsay, whom I knew was in the studio somewhere, take this as a serious breach of confidence—especially since I'd proclaimed it on national television?

"You're safe because you didn't mention my name," Lindsay said after the taping as we walked to her car. She gave me a stern look, but then laughed. "You can make it up to me by giving me some of the $15,000 you just won!"

In my mid-20s, when I was awarded a prestigious scholarship to study abroad in Spain, I called Lindsay immediately to share the news. That evening, she walked into our rent-controlled apartment in Santa Monica wielding a bottle of our favorite prosecco to mark the occasion.

A few months later, before I'd even left the country, Lindsay came home with her own good news: she had landed an amazing position at a bank in San Francisco. Again, we celebrated—this time, for her pivotal career move and the new life that awaited her in the Bay Area.

What I didn't know then was that Lindsay's move would mark the beginning of the end of our friendship.

The "ghosting"

Upon my return from Madrid at the age of 27, I set about remaking my life in Los Angeles. It was a challenging time of re-acculturation. I was eager to talk to Lindsay, who was still working in San Francisco and was now sharing an apartment with a friend named Alicia.

When we connected on the phone, she'd said she was crunching on a work deadline. "But I promise, I will get down to L.A. for a visit tout suite." When several weeks passed without a visit, I had to let in the possibility that Lindsay was not as excited to see me as I was her. When Lindsay stopped taking my calls or returning my messages, I realized I'd been dumped.

Why wouldn't she talk to me? This was the question I would ask myself ad infinitum. My gut told me I had been replaced by Alicia, but without the opportunity to talk to Lindsay, I could never really know. There was only silence on her end.

I found myself cycling through feelings of longing, then tears, then anger, and then back again. I realized I was in mourning, as my emotions mirrored the grief I had felt after losing my beloved grandfather. I would be out shopping on Main Street in Santa Monica, feeling happy, and then I'd walk by our favorite, funky coffee place—where we used to lounge in the back on bean bag chairs and talk and laugh for hours—and I would feel a sudden, sharp stab of missing her.

Moving on from our friendship

The loss of Lindsay, compounded by my ever-increasing anxiety over landing a job and finding my place in the world, made me decide to see a professional four months later. I'd never done therapy, so I was jittery when I walked into my therapist Janice's exposed brick office.

But Janice's warm demeanor put me at ease, and soon my story came spilling out. Janice listened, and then introduced me to the concept of "disenfranchised grief," which is loss that is not adequately acknowledged by society.

I mentioned a recent, fruitless search for the cards and letters from Lindsay that I'd saved. She nodded sympathetically. "Excessively seeking things that remind someone of their loss is one of the key symptoms of disenfranchised grief." Her explanation made me feel better, perhaps because I felt less alone. I envisioned, in my mind's eye, other women in other places who were conducting the same kind of desperate searches.

Mourning a female friendship is private, lonely, and goes by almost completely unacknowledged by friends, family, or society. While I can turn to romantic tearjerker movies, heartbreaking love ballads, and my friends' listening ears when I am mourning the loss of a boyfriend, these same avenues do not exist when it's an intimate female friendship.

Perhaps the problem is that we, as women, have been raised to believe that our relationships with men are important, lasting, and valuable, while female relationships are secondary, dispensable and replaceable. That script might be shifting, however, as more films, TV shows and books focus on the importance of female friendship.

Lindsay and I have not spoken in over 20 years and she remains an enigma to me. Sometimes a mutual friend and I will reminisce about her when we're together, laughing about the good times. It is akin to my mom and I talking about my father who has passed, gaining comfort in remembering him.

I am still an advocate for and believer in the value and importance of female friendships and I am fortunate to have a few very close friends, some of whom I met while older and wiser. I believe such friendships are essential—not just to each individual woman, but to our society as a whole.

Diana Daniele is a writer and publicist living in California. She is currently working on a memoir. To find out more, visit dianadanieleauthor.com

All views expressed in this article are the author's own.

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