She was the best friend of my dreams. The guaranteed birthday party invite, the future bridesmaid and godparent to imaginary children. We wore unicorn shirts on every Twin Day. We played a duet at every piano recital and ran barefoot between our neighboring houses every summer, whispering about the boys in our class that we loved and intended to marry. I never doubted that it was forever. Our magnetic friendship necklaces deemed that inevitable.
She transferred to the girls' school far away; I went to public school. A uniform replaced her justice leggings, and she didn’t want to be silly anymore. We still saw each other, but stories grew littered with irrelevant names, and the minimal overlap between our interests and circles made it hard to keep things the way I wanted them to be. Her talk of parties and mine of marching band competitions drew only blank stares between us. By the end of high school, we could not have been more different—a fact that made the over-brunch realization that we had committed to the same college even more shocking.
We visited for a weekend together. We met for a few meals and introduced our reluctant roommates. Yet somehow, courseloads and travel and changing seasons accompanied the further fading of our friendship, and in a world of 3,000 people, I still ask myself how we became strangers, how a longstanding bond could be reduced to a smile in passing.
I think the true tragedy lies in how our evolved relationship blinds us from what it once was. My lens is perpetually clouded. I look for clues in recital footage and our covers of early 2000s pop songs, wondering whether relics of the past can reveal what I seem to have missed, whether we reconstruct the memories of friendships once they’re lost. I try to recognize us in old photos, histories preserved on glossy paper. Had the loose thread been there all along, hiding behind these small faces? Can retrospection ever help explain a dissolution?
Perhaps she holds the answer I’m looking for. The mysterious moment in which we lost all ability to relate, a sentence or a sense of self that escapes my recollection. Perhaps her memory is the other half-heart necklace whose absence renders my phrase incomplete.
Her boyfriend walks by me now. I don’t know what she sees in him.
Sole Magazine