Dear high school best friend,
When we were in high school, we swore we were soul mates. My house was yours and yours was mine. We loved each other fiercely, protecting one another from any darkness that entered our paths. When someone said one of our names, the others name would soon trail after. We were a pair, not even that, we were one. Nothing could change the bond that we had.
Nothing, except for college. Maybe the separation was slow, and the continental drift of our relationship could be felt during graduation and throughout our last summer together. Or maybe it happened in the same way a volcano explodes. Everything at once, screams pouring from our flushed faces like lava and suddenly the smothering sense of nothing as the screams settled into silence. In the end, though, it doesn't matter how it happened. It just did.
High school has ended and now we're in college with people more compatible for who we have become than we could ever be for each other now. Our separation and consequential personal and social growth is undoubtably positive, but the hole that you left in my heart still twinges with pain now and then. Seeing the anti-frizz hair product you used with the funny name makes me wince. I don't go to the shitty pre-teen accessory store you used to work at in the mall... not like I did before either, but still. I only like your Instagram photos with your new friends out of social obligation to do so, all while telling myself to be happy that you are happy. It's good that you have friends, but where their faces are, I always expect to see mine.
We occasionally drift in and out of each others lives, squealing and hugging briefly while promising to hang out with the mutual understanding that we won't. We won't hang out because we no longer call each other 'my best friend' but rather 'my friend from high school' and that has been more damaging to us than whatever attempt at rekindling our friendship could fix. That sense of distance in the air between us is not purposeful and not mean, it is just a symptom of us growing into our own people.
Despite our separation, I don't dislike you. In fact, I still love you. I love you for the memories we share and how we have been able to shape each other as people in our most developmental years. As we grow older, our families will not vacation together, we won't have each others phone numbers when we switch phones, and I might hear of your engagement or the birth of your children through Facebook or hometown gossip. Even though we will probably never be close again, when you pop up in stories I tell or in photos I find, my heart will expand and I will smile.
Sincerely,
Someone who cherishes you to this day
