my best friend is leaving and my mom is taking it harder than anyne

so my best friend said she had something to tell me. we went out and i asked her and she was visibly nervous about it. nothing could have prepared me for her answer. a few months ago she applied to a university abroad. she got accepted, got her visa, and will be moving to another country likely for good in two months.

to say my life genuinely flashed before my eyes when she broke the news would be an understatement, as dramatic as it sounds. i know why. it feels like it makes sense for that to be how i feel. but i don't know how to explain it. we have been best friends for over ten years.

now for context, a lot of our friends throughout the years either moved abroad for school or got married yada yada. i for one never really cared, but i know feeling stuck sometimes weighed on her in comparison to those people.

it's not for lack of trying on my end, i do my share of scouring the internet for scholarships and jobs and programs abroad, since where i'm from that's really the measure of success and accomplishment. my mother thinks so, and routinely sends me job listings and enrollment annoucements for foreign countries to apply to. if not for the astronomical cost of these things, I would.

i of course did not show how distraught i felt to my best friend, instead resorting to reason over emotion and thinking about how amazing she got accepted somewhere so competitive so quickly, how proud i felt of her, how excited i am for her to start this new chapter. we got to talking about logistics and stuff like that, away from the clear lingering emotional simmering under the surface.

I don't think either one of us felt any delusion of being okay in that moment.

when I told my mother the news... she broke down. she went on about how alone i'd be, how everyone else up and went abroad, how we always had each other and now she'll be gone too. she was crying and it broke my heart, and unfortunately brought up my own unresolved emotions about all this.

my best friend and i already practically have a long distance friendship, we see each other maybe once every 2 to 3 months. but somehow this still feels like immeasurable loss. and i'd be good at reasoning my way out of these feelings if not for my mother's extreme reaction.

it has only been a day and she has been crying non stop while i console her with the same speech i repeat to myself in my internal monologue. she is an unfortunately contact reminder of what i am feeling underneath. it's als really disheartening to know my mother feels so sorry for me. i understand it, and i mostly understand that she feels like she herself is stuck and is worried about me being the same way. this news has triggered in a way i did not see coming but feel like i should have. she feels like her, me, and my brother are all stuck and nothing has changed since my dad died

aside from my feelings about my best friend leaving, my mother's reaction is forcing me to take a long look at things but i feel i am helpless to change them.

it all just sucks honestly and i don't know where to go from here. i don't want to feel this. i am usually an expert on detaching from emotions to keep functioning. but it feels too fucking immense to bury and i worry i won't be able to get past all the complex feelings if i start to let them in