Have you ever had a friend break up with you? In a text message?

A few months ago, a work friend whom I’ve known for sometime, fifteen years to be exact pretty much without actually typing the words, let me know that our friendship was over. I didn’t challenge it at the time, but since, I’ve been wondering why…

Funny story. We met in the most unusual way. The commuter train we were on, broke down. So a group of familiar faces who took the same train daily, decided to walk along the route until we were able to catch the next train. Which never happened and we all ended up reaching our destination respective destination and veered to our homes.

Weeks later I ran into him on the train again, we joked about the day the train broke down. And one day to the next of running into one another and stopping to chat, we eventually became commuter buddies. One day he told me he was moving to another town and was going to work outside of the city. I wished him well and that was the end of it.

Two years later, I started my current job and on my first day apparently an email had gone out to the staff to stop by my cubicle and to introduce themselves to me. I sensed someone at my desk. So I looked up, from reading my welcome packet and there he was standing just outside my cubicle with his jaw dropped. Mine too naturally. What were the odds?

Fast forward to fifteen years of daily greetings, weekly conversations and much laughter over coffee breaks, and company outing get-togethers – the pandemic paused work-life as we all know it.

Last year was a blur, and in March of this year I reached out to say hello and after a very brief catch up, he friend-broke-up with me…

Is this a thing?

Or life in the pandemic altered his thinking?

Should I be worried?

Or let it be?

What would you do if you were me?