It's been said, "It's crazy to think that someone who had such a huge part of your life can be gone in a second." This quote means a lot to me because it describes the hardships of losing a person who used to be a part of you. A person who you could count on for anything and everything. A person you trusted with everything. But it is even harder to get back into touch with that person because it is like all the memories created are suddenly meaningless. I didn't want that, so I decided to reach out to the person I lost touch with.

The hardest part of reconnecting is not talking to them, it's the getting past the awkwardness of having thousands of memories and still being able to talk like nothing ever happened.When I first moved to a Georgia apartment with my family, I found my best friend on the first day of elementary school. She was in second grade while I was in third grade, but our birthdays were not that far apart, so we were basically the same age. She and I were best friends, we used to do everything together from playing outside till sunset to after-school swim practice and biking around the apartment complex. We even met up at our families' parties and potlucks, glued together at every event. But then the time came where one of us had to move, and that someone was me.

I didn't move too far away. It was a 10 minute drive depending on traffic. And after I moved, we met almost every weekend at first, but as time passed, our visits were restricted to once a month, then once every six months, then once a year, then never again. I guess we both knew what was coming by that time. I could already hear the memories starting to drift away into the air. But like fate, after three whole years of never seeing each other, we met again. The time passed by slowly, the conversation started with "Hi, how are you?" and then went nowhere. But I had an idea. We had not met in years, and we could talk about anything, so why not talk about the memories we shared and laugh about how weird we were then?

That change of topic injected a spark of energy into our conversation, and time went by with a snap of the fingers. One memory we reminisced about for a long time was how we made up games at parties, but the twist was that it made no sense to anyone, yet it was still fun to tell it to them so that we could see their reaction at the end. However, my favorite memory was when we learned how to ride our bikes together. We both wanted to learn, so our dads would often teach one while the other cheered from the sidelines, then we would switch positions till the other's turn ended. In the end, we both learned how to ride our bikes together after the gruesome hours of practice and a good number of scrapes. Even now, that memory still cheers me up and encourages me to always get up and try again and again, cheering on those around me no matter how difficult life gets.

And more importantly, I'm able to share these feelings and memories with her again. I found the cure to our awkward challenge of reconnecting when we've become so different. It's the memories that made us friends and kept us close, ensuring we won't drift apart when there are so many memories — bad and triple the good — to recall. Next time you talk to someone who you have not spoken to in a while, instead of making it awkward, put an on a smile and get ready to laugh, because the memories are about to kick in.