Dear High School Best Friend,

I wasn’t expecting to see you. It was my very first day home on winter break, and I had just completed my last final that morning. My mom and I were grocery shopping, and had we made our way to the bakery section, admiring all the beautifully decorated goodies waiting to be brought home for the holidays. I have no idea what caused me to look up and see you. One second, my focus was on my mom and the conversation we were having, and the next, I was locking eyes with you.

I don’t remember who looked away first. But I do remember how the shock stung all over my body. I hadn’t seen you in about a year and a half. You looked exactly the same - a pale face coated in a smattering of freckles and your natural light orange hair. I guess I shouldn’t have expected you to look drastically different, though the time between now and graduation seems to be stretched out for a lengthy distance. And you weren’t just in the grocery store as a shopper - you worked here, a Festival Foods hat and apron marking you as an employee as you stood behind the case of frosted cookies and cupcakes.

You didn’t work at a grocery store when I knew you. You worked as a CNA at a nursing home, and you loved your job. You were going to be a nurse. Well, eventually, anyway. Even though I was slated to head off to college, you were taking a year off - a gap year, so to speak. I didn’t know your plan exactly because I don’t think you had a plan. So different from me, of course. I’m a natural planner. The unexpected and me didn’t mix so well.

We met back in sixth grade. That feels like a lifetime ago now. I can vividly see who I was back then - alone, awkward, and anxious. I only was introduced to you through your best friend from elementary school, Mackenzie. All of sixth grade, I knew you strictly as Mackenzie’s best friend. It wasn’t until seventh grade that we became close. That was when our friendship truly started and flourished. We knew each other’s crushes and assigned boys hilarious and secretive nicknames. We gossiped about what happened to this person in class or what this person said. And even though I now see this as kind of odd, I want to think that our most unifying trait in our friendship was not that we liked the same things, but that we didn’t like the same things.

We had very little in common. You were fascinated by haunted houses, ghosts, and everything paranormal, while I can’t say I really enjoy horror movies. You were a passionate vegan and I never considered even being vegetarian. We had clashing political ideologies. We didn’t see eye to eye on controversial topics.

But I did consider you my best friend. Maybe we became friends because we were two outsiders in high school, but you were still my closest friend nevertheless. You were always there. I remember you sneaking up behind me while I was getting things out of my locker after school. I remember us eating lunch together, me being self conscious with my turkey sandwich once you decided to go vegan. I remember scanning the hallways for you so that I would have someone to sit next to for the countless assemblies. I remember senior year, how we ate lunch in the hallway instead of the cafeteria, our backs against the brick wall.

I want to thank you for that - for being there for me. I would have felt so alone without you by my side for all those years. I can’t even imagine. Thank you for listening to my rants, bad jokes, and observations on the adolescent world spinning around us. Thank you for being a good friend to me. I needed that in my life.

I know that we aren’t friends anymore. It wasn’t because we had a fight or decided that we didn’t like each other anymore. We simply grew apart. We live completely different lives now. Even though so much has happened in my life since the last time I saw you, I don’t think I would have anything to really say to you. You wouldn’t understand anymore, just like I wouldn’t understand anything about you anymore.

I definitely feel regretful about the way our friendship just fell apart. I should have been a way better friend to you. I should have reached out a lot more. I should have made sure that you knew how much your friendship meant to me. But what’s done is done.

I wonder what you thought when you saw me at the grocery store. Did it hit you as hard as it hit me? How tragic it is that two best friends are now strangers to each other?

We lead completely separate lives now, but for a split second, our lives intersected again. I saw you, you saw me. I’m not sure what it was suppose to mean. Maybe it meant absolutely nothing. But personally, I think it meant something.