How do you break up with an old friend?

I’VE been broken up with in almost every imaginable way. Face to face — in agonising tear-filled conversations that began with snotty “I still love you”s and ended with spittle-mouthed “I NEVER loved you anyway”s. Ah my 20s. I’ve been dumped over text (they always begin with “I’m sorry to do this over text...”) which begs the question — but are you, really? I’ve been given the bad news by email (ironic subject line: “We need to talk”, when of course they are too cowardly to talk, but given the aforementioned reactions, fair enough). But before you start weeping into your handkerchiefs for lil’ old me, I should state that I’ve done my fair share of dumping too — most dramatically when I left an actor who was very fond of class A drugs and not so fond of me with the parting line: “Your life amounts to nothing more than a phone full of names of girls who don’t remember you and a ton of overflowing ashtrays.” But I’ve never ever broken up with a friend. Even writing the words bruises my heart, like a thumb to an overripe avocado, which I think you’ll agree is a thoroughly millennial metaphor.

I’ve been phased out by one very old friend, sure, and though it hurt at the time, I lived. It made sense — we grew apart. Our childish jokes were no longer funny. There was no communal glue of teachers, exams and boys’ names scrawled on desks with pencil case compasses we should have been using for… metalwork? I’ll never be sure. Now I feel like another old friend and I are drifting. Even though we aren’t romantically involved, I find the thought of not having her in my life viscerally painful. It’s an ache, not a slice, but I’ve been there so many times before, I know the signs. And even though I recognise the familiar feeling, I still feel sad to let go.