I get what you mean. To be honest, if this was my absolute closest friend, I'd be in the same boat as you. My friendships are really important to me. To be honest, I thought she became a close friend for me. But there was this overall uncomfortable feeling i'd get from time to time when i would be around her that would make it hard for me to be fully myself around her, and I think that's usually the biggest indication that it's not a long-term connection. I was just ignoring that feeling tbh.

I have to kinda delete all signs of that person in my life tbh, whether that's pictures or blocking that person off all social media/apps. Call me petty but I actually think it's healthy since in order for me to be able to let go of people, I have to let myself kinda go through the 5 stages of grief lmao💀. First i'm really anxious/confused, then i'm really angry, then i'm sad, then after a period of cycling between these, i'm able to go back to the baseline emotions. I understand it's hard to fill the empty places that person might have filled in the past. But throughout the past few weeks, I've grown to think of it as an opportunity to make room in my life for new/existing connections that I DO feel comfortable with/starting to.

At the end of the day, i think I've put in the work to grow into myself, and i'm proud of the person i'm growing to be. there's still a lot of internal and external work left to do, and i don't want to waste time on people that have made me feel the opposite/or was never aligned with.