30 Days of Truth: Day 9
Originally published at Skyspun.org. You can comment here or there.
Day 9 > Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.
I grew up on dead end street. It was tucked away at the far side of town, and people rarely knew we even existed. We liked it that way, though. The residents were all so very close to each other. I have fond memories of swimming in our neighbor’s in-ground pool, and summer block parties that would reach far into the wee hours of the morning. No one locked their doors, and no one worried about their children, because all the parents knew that everyone treated the neighborhood kids as their own.
It was there that I found my best friend, J. She had moved into the house across the street from us all the way from Australia when I was only a young child, and we immediately took to each other. I still have a vague memory of my mother coming to me in the back yard, telling me that J had moved in, and that she wanted to say hi. I stood on my back porch and shyly introduced myself. We were inseparable ever since.
There are so many memories. So many cherished moments of using intercoms in our bedrooms (way before we were ever allowed to have a telephone in our room) to talk to each other late at night. Playing the longest game of Barbies ever known in her closet while listening to Debbie Gibson’s “Out of the Blue.” And so many ridiculous arguments, like what the purpose of a sports bra was. Drawing a line down the center of the street and claiming that we weren’t allowed to cross it because we were so angry with each other.
It wasn’t until we got older that things got a bit trickier. We started dating, and I started to have problems adjusting to the fact. I did things I wasn’t very proud of, and unfortunately it slowly pushed her away from me. My parents divorced, and a few years later, so did hers. They were going to be moving… And the thought alone made me sick to my stomach. I couldn’t imagine living on our street without her right there across from me.
The last day they were at the house, I went to visit her. The movers had emptied all their belongings by that time, and walking into the front door felt like I had entered an alternate universe. It was an empty shell of their house. We went upstairs to her bedroom, and I had a flash of the memory when they had first moved in. We had decided to put on our socks and slide back and forth on the hardwood floor before they moved all her furniture in… And she slipped and broke her arm.
We sat in the once-again empty room for a bit and reminisced. J suddenly had an idea. She grabbed a pen and we carved our initials in the baseboard of her bedroom: JC & JS BFF.
Sitting on her front step, we watched her mother load more belongings into their car and flutter around the house, looking for little pieces of their lives to pack away. I had to go for a bit, and was worried I would miss J before I got back. “Don’t worry, we’ll be here for a while longer,” she told me. So, I left.
When I returned, the house was empty and the cars were gone. They were gone, and I never really got the chance to say goodbye. I cried and cried and cried.
I would like to say that we kept in touch. I would love to be able to tell you that we remained “BFF”s even though we no longer lived near each other. Sadly, we lost touch for a long time. My mother used to tell me that she felt the only reason we were ever that close was because we were forced into a friendship due to the fact that we lived close to each other. But I know better than that. We were complete different ends of the spectrum, but we were like sisters.
We keep in touch a bit now through Facebook. She’s married with a daughter and another on the way, living in Pennsylvania. I haven’t seen her in years. I miss our friendship, but I know that it will never quite be that way again. I guess that’s what happens when you grow up.