rant abt loosing childhood friend

okayy so this is a long story but pretty much ive been friends with this guy josh for almost my entire life , friends since preschool and bestfriends since year 7 ( 6th grade i think) and we were attatched at the hip for our entire life, doing everything together passing through friend groups but always staying a duo, and eventually it became a trio with this guy Aaron who moved to Auckland in 2021 but we stayed really close friends with him 

throughout 2022 - 2023 we were still bestfriends and still going through other friendgroups  together untill eventually we landed ourselves in one that we stayed in with four other people and josh clicked with them way more than i did, it had always been like that with josh making the friends and me sticking by his side

but slowly i started growing out of that phase of my life of being a 14 year old playing video games every day with the same friends doing the same thing for almost four years by then and i started exploring other things and other genres and i grew on myself alot, and slowly me and josh started growing apart but we still stayed bestfriends throughout and i never was friends with anybody else except for online like it had always been but slowly i watched josh and i start growing apart, going out with the others in my friendgroup and none of them telling me or inviting me which is fine its just that then they would talk about all these cool things they did together infront of me knowing that none of them invited me

around june last year i met my girlfriend and me and her started hanging out more and more often , i started to pull more and more away from josh and that friend group until eventually i would only ever see them at school , i started to grow on myself alot and my mental health got shittier as i matured more and dealt w issues that i had always had buried in me and that seperated me from them even more , they had never dealt with having split parents or not being able to afford groceries some weeks and it had always been a big contrast between us with my ripped jeans and  clothing that had patches all over them covering holes and their perfect uniform and sleek dress pants , i guess part of me grew to resent them for that even though it wasnt their fault that they were blessed with wealthy parents

eventually i stopped talking to them online too , and i started hanging out with this other friend group which is a whole other story :\ but that friend group fell apart and me going to other people at school instead of josh and my old friend group just caused us to fall apart, sometimes our friend aaron would catch a plane down from auckland to see us in the holidays but it got to apoint where i was just trying to activly avoid him and not see him because they just drained me , i didnt enjoy being friends with them and i knew i wasnt truly friends with them anymore but i was just so attached to what me josh and that whole friend group had that i couldnt let go, im lucky to have my girlfriend because she helped alot in sorting out my feelings and making me see things for what they were , i started to realise that i wasnt the only one that had changed but so had josh, and that whole friend group had just become so entitled and two faced with eachother i couldnt be part of it anymore and i left , i cut aaron and josh off and i have never felt better, its like i finally feel free and alive again even though i dont really have friends at school anymore i realise i felt more lonely being friends with them than i do actually being alone 

i sit and think for hours and i actually have the time to for once, i go on walks down to the river by school at lunch and i have the freedom to be myself for a bit without changing for someone else, i feel amazing and even though i miss the connection of having a bestfriend, i havent found that person yet and im content with myself for now, i guess having w33d helps but who knows maybe ill find someone else who loves sleeping as much as i do, im content with my girlfriend for now though .

thx for reading my vent lol