Where Do We Go From Here?

One of my good friends and I are going through a similar sort of experience right now, and it's kind of strange.  I'm not sure I've been at this point in my life before.  Have you ever had a friend that you've been friends with for a really long time, and then one day, for some reason, you realize you're only friends with them because you have been for so long?  If you met them today, you probably wouldn't be friends with them?  Maybe they did something, or you suddenly spent more time with them than you've spent in a long time.  Whatever the initial impetus, the realization hits you in the face like a high-speed frisbee.  It's sudden, you didn't see it coming, and it hurts.

I don't really know what you do with this friendship.  Do you keep holding on to it because it's lasted so long?  Sort of live in the past?  Focus on the little bit that you do still have in common or still like about each other?  Just let it drift apart like so many other relationships, until the friend becomes one of those fondly remembered people you haven't spoken to in years?  Do you "break-up"?  Actually talk about what's wrong, what bothers you, either to end the friendship or to try to fix it?  Or maybe, you just walk away, and hope that the foreseeable next few months of usual minimal contact will return things to the way they were before, a state of blissful ignorance.

I have to admit, right now, I'm leaning toward the last one.  It seems less painful, less evil, less deliberate, less permanent, and, well, easier.  Yet, I think if I were to stay here more time, I would simply explode.  The underlying churning caused by the things which served as my own impetus would cause me to burst at the seams, spewing forth a mountain of slanderous, hot-headed rhetoric.  Most of which I probably wouldn't actually mean.  Yes, it is good I am going home soon.  But still, what does one do with this sort of  friendship?