“The buddy days are over”?

I can hear the song “The dog days are over”  by Florence + The Machine playing in my head. And maybe, for me, “the buddy days are over”.

“[…] 

The buddy days are over

The buddy days are done

[…]

[…]

Run fast […]

[…]

Leave all your love and your longing behind

You can’t carry it with you if you want to survive

The buddy days are over

The buddy days are done

[…]

[…] 

“ 

Within the first six months from moving out to Colorado in Jan. 2022, I met and bonded with four cis-het men that quickly become trusted climbing buddies and close friends. Then, by the spring of 2023, I had also made two close friends as running buddies, also cis-het men. 

These six men were among the most important people in my life. The four climbing buddies I met when I had just started using “they” pronouns and presenting as non-binary, before my top-surgery and before starting GAHT. So they met me when I looked like a girl, when I was still in that caterpillar phase of trying to define myself while my outside looks didn’t align to my inner feelings. Despite probably “seeing a girl”, they totally treated me like a “bro”, like the boy I said I was. They were like brothers to me, incredible allies, helping me discover my masculinity along with my identity as a climber. The two running buddies, instead, I met shortly after my top-surgery, at the first race I was able to do after two months of recovery & no running. So they, too, met me in a very delicate and important phase of my life, in a limbo when I was still adjusting to my “new” body and the GAHT hadn’t had its full effect, yet, on my facial features & body-hair. They, too, were there for me as allies and “male havens”. 

For a couple years, I reveled in these close friendships, in the camaraderie, in the frequent runs or climbs or adventures with these guys.

Then, gradually, these friendships started shifting, or ending even. 

My Italian climbing buddy — who had been the first non-medical person to see my “new” chest, my boy’s chest after top-surgery, and to this day is still the only cis person to have seen the photo-shoot I did in Dec. 2022 to commemorate my breasts before chopping them off — moved back to Europe. 

My French climbing buddy — who had been the very first friend I made when I moved to Colorado in the winter of 2022 and was the buddy who took me to my top-surgery in Jan. 2023 — moved to California. 

The younger of my running buddies and I both moved away from the town where we were living when we met; the effect of that, combined with his increasing family duties and the differences in our running goals, is that now we see each other only two or three times a year instead of once a week. He was the buddy who supported & shadowed/paced me in a race where I protested for the rights of nonbinary & trans athletes, and the friend who took me to my salpingectomy. 

The older of my running buddies has basically stopped all communication with me since last Sept. 2025, for “mental health issues” of his own, according to his wife with whom I’m still in touch. He was partly a friend and partly a father figure for me. 

So, of those six men who had been so important in my life, with whom I had had such strong camaraderie and the experience of being “male buddies”, an experience I longed for so much, had craved for so much of my life, only two were left: E. & J. And with both of them I have recently had final friends-breakups. 

The loss of these six buddies over the past year or two has had different causes for each of them. Some of these losses have been more gradual or “organic”, due more to “life circumstances” than actual conflict or abandonment/rejection, whereas the recent friends-breakups with E. & J. were caused by actual breaches of trust. But regardless of the causes or modalities, all these losses are painful. Having deep, platonic male friendships that felt like brotherhoods — that male camaraderie, those adventure buddies — was something I had craved and sought out my entire life and found here in Colorado, at last. Or so it seemed. Those relationships were fundamental to my own coming into myself as a man, fundamental for my gender journey, key in finding or establishing myself as a climber & adventurer. Those friendships were fundamental for me in a delicate, key phase of my life. And those friendships are now over. 

“The buddy days are over”. 

I’m struggling with the end of that phase — or with having to acknowledge it, to face it. 

But face it I must: a phase of my life has ended. Whether it’s because they moved on with their straight, normative lives or they broke my trust or I grew out of needing a certain type of “male model”, the end result is the same: “the buddy days are over” for me. I don’t have any more friendships that are of that youthful yet profound male-buddy type. 

But maybe, instead of pining over the end of that phase (& the loss of those men from my life), I should embrace it, taking the cue from the song “The dog days are over”  by Florence + The Machine who encourage to embrace the sudden happiness. In my case it’s not sudden happiness but it is, nonetheless, the opportunity for a new beginning. After all, I have changed and grown a lot from 3-4 years ago when I met those guys and bonded with them…

Yes, six doors have closed for me, but for every door that closes, there might be another one that opens, somewhere else…?