I lost 5 friends on April 1st.

Let me be more forthcoming. CBS’ long-running sitcom “How I Met Your Mother” ended after nine seasons.

I know it sounds weird but face it, everyone gets attached to TV shows and their characters. When a show is on for a long time, it’s easy to end up experiencing things with the characters and often sharing those experiences. One sees them every week for eight, nine, ten years, and then one day, just like that they’re gone.

In the case of “How I Met Your Mother,” the show had been on since I was 11, half my life. Throughout my best and worst times over the last nine years, there was always a new HIMYM episode nine months out of the year.

I think the empty feeling I had when the show ended was that loss of consistency, of safety. I won’t have these characters throughout the best and worst times of the next nine years and as strange as it may sound, immediately after the finale, that seems like a scary prospect.

It’s also a good thing. It’s a reminder to live in the present and that the future is coming, whether my favorite characters come with me or not.

Just please CBS, no spin offs. I can’t go through a Friends/Joey situation again.

Matt Murphy can be reached at [email protected] or @matthewcharlesz on Twitter.