Never Have I Ever, SOUR, and the Exploration of Friendship Breakups in Art
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Molly and I have been falling out for a while now. Like a comet crossing the sky, our friendship felt too good to be true, a storybook that continued to unravel from the beginning. Growing up down the street, we cemented ourselves as sisters more than friends, weaving through the trials and tribulations time had to offer. Now, post college, that time serves more an enemy than a friend, ripping us apart as we grew miles away from each other. Bickering is never solved, differences less lovable than they were before. We fight often and now, the silence is deafening, one that spans seas instead of states.
Last I checked, she had me blocked on Instagram.
Friendship breakups, though less sensationalized than romantic ones, hold a different, more desperate, heartbreak than goodbyes we were conditioned to expect. As Scaachi Koul wrote in her book One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, “Your life's greatest heartbreaks are so often your friends. Dating isn't always built for permanence, but friendship often is.” The sentiment is something easily relatable, one that cuts to the core.
We are used to the absence left behind by a significant other, but the absence of a friend is never one we expect.
Never Have I Ever, a show written and produced by Mindy Kaling, premiered on Netflix last month to its niche crowd of loving, adoring fans. The show, largely based off Kaling’s experiences as a first generation Indian-American, centers around overachiever Devi Vishwakumar (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) as she navigates the grief of her father’s death. Devi’s grief manifests in anger and, on the heels of season 1, she often pushes those closest to her away in her outbursts of rage.
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Unable to control her emotions, her episodes manifest in losing friends alongside her chaotic nature.
In the first season, Devi loses her closest friend Fabiola and Eleanor after prioritizing boy problems above their needs. This season, Never Have I Ever explores Devi competing with the only other Indian girl in her class for her peer’s approval. At her worst, Devi starts a rumor about Aneesa (Megan Suri), the cool new girl stealing everyone, including her love interest Ben’s (Jaren Lewison), approval. In a fit of anger, she loses someone who put her trust in her and faces the repercussions of her actions, isolated in loneliness.
This too, loss at your own hands, often plays a catalyst in friendship breakups. As someone who’s anxiety manifests in anger, this friendship breakup, to me, is the worst considering there truly is nothing you can do to comfort or remedy the situation. Devi tries her best to fix the situation with elaborate apologies but it’s the waiting that hurts the most, the hope treats you laid out will bring love back to your doorstep. Eventually, Aneesa forgives her but the situation is changed forever. Trust that lied at the heart of their friendship must be rebuilt and no matter where it gets, the relationship will never be the one it once was at the beginning.
Art is always open to interpretation. SOUR, Olivia Rodrigo’s recent breakup album, centers romance and, unknowingly by extension, friendship heartbreak at its most vulnerable. In the song “enough for you,” Rodrigo details how far she went for the love of one person, a feat often palpable as we cling to the comfort of home we create in others. In the song, Rodrigo sings:
“I knew how you took your coffee and your favorite songs by heart. I read all your self-help books so you’d think I was smart, stupid, emotional, obsessive little me. I knew from the start this is exactly how you’d leave.”
Though Rodrigo is singing about her recent breakup with Joshua Bassett, the song hits a chord on how we understand our friend’s more thoroughly than they know themselves and when they leave, we’re left with the pain and knowledge their lives go on without ours. Truly her album, like many geared towards breakups, can be viewed through the lens of friendship as well. In the song favorite crime, she discusses comradery, pinpointing that together, the most beautiful relationships stem from being partners in crime. This, for me, is where pain stems from the most losing friends, a reminder that a constant loyal to you despite anything, is now a missing person’s poster hanging from your four post bed:
“It’s bittersweet to think about the damage that we do. ‘Cause I was going down but I was doing it with you.”
I wait on a text that never comes and reminisce on good times through rose colored glasses. The later we grow into life, the more we realize people, like clothes, don’t fit us anymore. Our priorities change, people change, and within that, love is lost. Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me, a lesbian graphic novel featuring a toxic relationship, pinpoints this problem at the heart of friendships, how huge falling outs occur, people grow apart, or both happen mutually. The past hurts, memories become lost with time and friends do too.
As we move from the people that brought us comfort, we reconcile with pain unlike anything we’ve felt before, a foreign feeling that leaves a different hole in our heart. I miss Molly, I miss Devin and Elsie and the people I’ve lost who were the ones built for permanence, the ones who promised to shoulder my pain during times when pain prevailed. I see our stories reflected in art and realize this pain is not unique, it is one I watch unravel in time as I comfort other friends through their breakups. I move away from the place we both occupied in each other’s lives and they do, too.
I wish the happiest to those who brought their happiness to me.
Words: Meggie Gates | Illustrator: Amy Lauren
