I have always been afraid of endings. I am not sure why I developed a fear of change, especially since much of my life has been lived in longing for something better. This is probably why I often hold on to things too tightly and tend to let go too late. As I live through my thirties, however, I have come face to face with one ending after another, most of them predictable and inevitable, some of them unexpected. I grieved through many of these changes, even the ones I wanted or even caused to happen, knowing that these were the end of some important stages of my life. The endings I grieved the most, naturally, were those of friendships. Before some of those friendships came to an end, I had only known loyalty and grief that flows towards reconciliation. I had had disagreements with friends before, but we had always patched things up to either bring back the old order of things or build something new and stronger. I had never known myself to be one to detach, especially after