Friendships can end without explosions. Leaving with grace is a skill most adults never learn.

Not every ending requires somebody to have done wrong. People change shape a lot between fifteen and twenty, and two lives can stop pointing the same direction without any betrayal in it. The instinct is to manufacture a fight, because a fight at least explains things, while drifting apart feels like nobody’s fault and everybody’s loss.

If a friendship is fading, let it fade without wrecking it on the way out. Say something kind and true rather than nothing at all. Leave the door where it is, because people circle back, and how you left is what they remember when they think about knocking.