Losing a best friend can hurt as much as a breakup. Nobody brings flowers for it, but it’s real.

There is no recognized version of this, which is part of why it hurts the way it does. A breakup has a word and a shape and people who ask how you are doing. A friendship ending has none of that, so the loss gets carried privately and often gets talked out of existence. It was years of your life and someone who knew you.

You are allowed to treat it as a loss, at whatever size it actually is. Telling one person that you are sad about it tends to help more than you would expect. There is no schedule for this, and nothing to fix.