Best friendship doesn’t mean the same thing it meant a couple of years ago. It’s harder to gloss over the fact that we have no shared experiences, that we often have to rehash the same things in order to get to a place where we even remember why we are close. Unless in the same physical space, I see us having to build to the spontaneity, the effortlessness that characterized our friendship even just a year ago. We’ve changed, even though we claim not to have. We’ve unveiled parts of ourselves that we were afraid to, that we closed off, even to ourselves, because they were amalgamations of everything people saw us as, rather than what we were.

But we aren’t those people anymore. We aren’t in each other’s lives enough that we can influence the people we are becoming. That’s a scary thought. What if a year from now we are nothing more than shells of our former selves, dregs of the people we promised each other we would always be?

I don’t believe in high school promises. Not one has worked out the way I hoped it would. We certainly haven’t made the kind of time for each other that we promised we would. Nor have we pushed ourselves to do the little things that had become almost tradition in our self-sufficient little unit. We say we haven’t replaced each other, but the simple fact that I’m not a part of your home makes that a lie. As much as I miss you and your laugh and your heart breaking positivity, we aren't the friends we were and holding on to the pieces of what we used to be doesn’t feel right anymore.

And yet you are still here. An unquestioned name in every conversation, a piece of every decision I make, the first name on my mother’s tongue when I invite a friend over for dinner. We aren’t the same us that made every life-changing decision together, that spent half of every day in each other’s company, but we are the "us" that found a new way to be best friends. We’ve torn ourselves apart, started almost from scratch so many times that it sometimes feels like that isn’t possible. If we aren’t even the same people we were, how can a friendship based on the comfort we derived from who we were still exist?

If you have a favorite sock that develops a hole which you patch up with a new piece of cloth and keep doing the same every time a hole forms until it has none of the original material left, is it still your favorite sock? Perhaps not materially, but the essence of favorites still seems to linger. The nature of our friendship, the material, the fabric which holds it up structurally may have changed. We may not talk about the same things we did, our experiences certainly aren’t built around the routine we had become so comfortable with over the years. Nevertheless, quite like the proverbial sock, it’s the essence, our best friend-ness that our new relationship has been built around. Without the foundation we created all those years ago, without the promises we made but didn’t keep, we probably wouldn’t have changed with each other, would have become two separate entities made of materials we never knew we had. But we used a relationship we can never really give up on to make new promises, to discover a new us, an us that is as integral to our new lives as it was in the past.

We have moved seamlessly into the new stages of our lives and learnt that whatever form our relationship takes, whatever fabric it is sewn into, it will continue to be the favorite sock from all those years ago. This isn’t the attempt every set of high school friends makes at labelling a friendship that just doesn’t exist anymore. It is an acceptance that while we now belong to different worlds and different moments which we will probably never get to experience together, we can still be a part of these as a result of the friendship we choose to keep alive. Our essence allows us to carve out a new relationship every day and still own best friendship like we did all those years ago.

So this year, when I wish you a happy birthday, I’m not going to rehash the tropes, the jokes, the cute little us things we’ve grown to find such comfort in. Instead, I’m going to tell you how proud I am of you for growing so gracefully into whoever you see yourself being 10 years from now. You’ve bounced into college and made a place for yourself in a way I never could and I admire you for that. With every new experience you gain, I see you learning how to be yourself more, how to be yourself better and I love that you continue to assert that signature you-ness in a way so many people are afraid to. These are tough years: volatile, hormonal, bewildering. Somehow, you are getting through them with strength and grace, making decisions I may not agree with, but I always come to respect. It is overwhelming to imagine that the girl with the crooked red glasses has become the assertive, secure, beautiful you that I know today, and I am so immensely lucky to be able to have stuck around through that transition.

I don’t want to make the predictable promises of an unchanging friendship because we both know we are too restless to be held back by anything of that nature. But you are a part of my life that has grown with me, helped me become stronger, less afraid, more me, and without even knowing it, you do this every day. So instead I’ll assure you that while we aren’t going to be us in the way we were, us, however, it is manifested, will be around for a lot longer than the promises we made to stay the same. There will be parts of our relationship — languid hours spent watching "Masterchef" or "America's Next Top Model" or whatever it is we latch on to for the week, our ridiculously annoying use of Snapchat, the inordinate amounts of inexplicable laughter post Dr. KC or “English” — that will resist change and allow us to hold on to the semblance of comfort that we bring each other. But for when the rest dissolves into mere memory, our fluidness will allow us to transcend high school tropes and get through life together.

I love you K, just know that whoever we become, you are my forever friend.