Damn, I've been thinking some deep thoughts in the past few weeks. This week's topic, inspired by Dodie Clark's "I Knew You Once", is nostalgia and old friends.
I knew you once, and it was nice. I knew your brain, and your heart, all your insides.
When I read this, I thought of an old friend of mine, one who, at the time, I loved very dearly. Not even two years ago, she and I were inseparable, to the point where people believed we were a couple in the way we interacted.
She knew me, my brain, my heart, my reactions, my thoughts, my class schedule, my quirks, my history, everything. We told each other the weirdest things, and our odd way of thinking so reflected on one another. We would talk about stupid haircuts and playing masculine sports and run in the hallways of the high school laughing with tomfoolery that it seemed no one else understood.
At the time, I hadn't understood the impact she had on my life, until I saw her Instagram, recently. She has grown into a beautiful young woman as compared to the awkward greenlings we both were in high school.
She is thriving. She is thriving without me. A way I never pictured her, but somehow, that's how it is. Seeing her bloom from afar gives me a unique, melancholy sort of joy.
Sometimes I wish I had the courage to reach back out to her, to see if our childish friendship could still survive after, simply put, so many years of being apart. But when the rose-tinted glasses are removed, I see that she has grown. And so have I.
We swapped our smiles, gifted advice. Yes, I knew you once, and it was nice.
And I'll never take back the time that I knew her. But the truth is, I don't know her anymore. She has come to be interested in different things, botany and biology while I have moved towards the entertainment industry.
I don't remember the last time I shared a laugh with her, though, I definitely know it was a laugh. The few times we fought always ended in tears of joy. As we grew up, we grew in, towards each other, loving one another in that special kind of way that, really, only best friends can. And then we grew out, into our separate lives to fit our separate skins, without one another.
Yes, I knew her once. And it was nice.
