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| Jem and Will by a chelseabee |
Q. Hi Cassie! I just want to say that your last book COHF (and also the others) helped get through a tough time. My best friend (I mean my Soul Best Friend, that I know since I was 7) showed me City of Bones one day. And I got so into the saga and the characters and so I kept reading them ALL. Even TID. Anyway, that BFF, stopped talking to me last month, she thought we were ‘too different’ to still get along with each other and without any other explanation she just left me. It felt like a betryal. She was my PARABATAI. We were will and jem. Jace and alec. Emma and jules. WE DEFINITELY WERE THEM. We r different, that’s true, but we complemented each other and never had that been a problem. And I am so wrecked. And I was reading COHF while all of this was happening. And it was heartbreaking for me too read about alec and jace and how I had lost MY PARABATAI. The one person a NEVER thought I would lose. And I was just wondering, how can someone get over the fact of losing their parabatai? I know will lost jem and jem lost will, but that was kind of mutual. This time, it feels like I am the only one suffereing cause she doesnt even show or let me know that she cares about what happend. And do you believe that Parabatais maybe werent meant to be parabatais in the first place? Because I believe is worse to think that maybe she wasnt my parabatai after all… Jem will never get over the fact that he lost his parabatai and I dont want to feel this forever. Advice? Amazing fact: when we were 10 we did a pact. A pact of commitment, a pact that said we were FOREVER. Like a parabatai’s pact (we didnt runed ourselves though, we just holded hands haha) And I remember it every single day, while I stare at nothing, forever wishing this hadnt happend to me.—[name redacted]
CASSIE: This isn’t technically Shadowhunter stuff, so this is just my advice as a human and I hope it isn’t terrible. Friend breakups are the worst. Here is this person you relied on and thought would be there for you forever and then they’re – gone. As with any relationship, a close friendship creates a world, a world where the two of you live, and when the friendship ends that world dies. So you’re right to mourn, and it’s okay to do so.
Jem won’t get over losing Will, and Will never gets over losing Jem. Their lives go on though and they do heal. Time makes everything better, even the most terrible things. I think you’re more where Clary is at the end of CoHF when she’s lost Simon and she’s outside his school just hoping to see him. She’s lost that world, that Clary-and-Simon world she’s had since she was little, and she feels lost. There’s nothing romantic about it; it’s pure friendship heartbreak, the worst kind.
The thing about losing a friend that makes it specifically hard is that we haven’t really made a place in our culture for that kind of heartbreak. There’s a million songs about romantic breakups but much less about the end of a friendship. There’s a big narrative space for the arc of romances and romantic experience and everyone understands coming over to their friend’s house to mourn the loss of a boyfriend or girlfriend with ice cream and bad movies. Everyone expects you to listen to sad songs and cry in your car. But people don’t really have programmed responses to understanding what losing a friend means. Friendship simply isn’t prioritized the way romantic love is, and that’s a shame.
I guess I would just say it’s okay to experience the grief. It’s often the only way to get through it and come out the other side. It’s okay to feel betrayed, but don’t lash out. You’ve no idea what’s going on with your friend, why she did this (because she didn’t tell you, which is on her, but nevertheless) and these things are cyclical. I had a best friend when I was seven; we fell out when I was seventeen; now she’s coming to spend the week with me next week. We’re friends again. We forgot the bad stuff and focused on the years of good. In a large part because neither of us did anything to hurt the other one during the years we didn’t talk. We didn’t slag each other off, we didn’t tell everyone we knew what a bitch the other one was (or make massive internet posts about it, but, you know, we didn’t really have the Internet, thank God) which is the kind of thing that you can never come back from. Lashing out is usually a form of trying to gain closure from someone else, but sometimes you need to gain closure on your own. And it’s a skill that will hold you the rest of your life. Put the meaningful objects from your friendship away somewhere safe, but a place you don’t have to look at right now. Grieve the loss. Give yourself as much time as you need. Remind yourself what your strengths are. You can insist on respect for the loss you’ve sustained. “I just lost my best friend and I’m feeling pretty low.”
I think you’ll be surprised at the response you’ll get. Because everyone has a story of friend heartbreak, and everyone’s had the same problem of how to share and express it. And whether your friend comes back to you or not, you’ll have new friends, and they will be awesome in different ways, and one day you’ll look back on all the good stuff you had between you and smile rather than thinking about what you lost and being sad.
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| From Cassie's twitter account |
Exciting news from Cassie and for all our Brazilian MMs!! Cassie just posted that she got her visa to visit Brazil!! The latest information on signings can be found below:
Sao Paolo (August 23rd and 24th at 3: 30 p.m.): click on dates for more information.
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