Goodbye Old Friend

Today my sister and I were talking about the weekend. I told her that tomorrow we're hanging with the weed smokers. She laughed, and then said, "Is this the kind of weekend that you miss J?"

I didn't know what to say. I kind of stuttered. "Yeah, a little." The truth was, yes, so much that it's painful to talk about it. So let's not.

J and I became friends when we were juniors in high school. She was new to the school that I had been attending since I was in first grade. I never really fit in with many people there, then J came. I thought she was so cool. We hit it off one day on the way home from something. I went to a very small, very Christian private school. J and I were the misfits, so we misfit together. We got in trouble when we made a mean book and someone found it. We stuck together so much so that people spread rumors that we were gay. In the school we went to, that was an insult. We laughed it off. We became exclusive to each other, to the point where I shut out friends I had had forever in preference of J.

We had one fight in that time, and it lasted months. I wish I could say that I don't know what it was over, but I do. It was a boy. I thought she was trying to steal a boy from me. J was always prettier and littler than me, and I was at the time very insecure. We stopped talking. When I went away to college, we started talking again. We knew that we'd always be friends. That was a blip.

I have so many memories of us together. She was there the night I got my first kiss. She used to make out with my cousin in the backseat of my car. She called me when she got a hickey on her neck and didn't know what to do. We spent most weekend every weekend at each other's houses. We were insecure, so we made fun of everyone else. I was the maid of honor in her wedding. I was out of state when she had her first daughter, but she still called me Auntie Paige. I stayed with her first daughter when she went to the hospital to have her second daughter. I was an aunt to her girls. I was one of the few people she told me I could trust with them.

There was always alot of drama around J. I always supported her. Told her she was right, even if I didn't agree. We shopped together. We'd walk around malls together. We'd vent together. She and her family became my family. We all spent holidays together. She helped me plan my wedding. She was with me the night I found my centerpieces. I was her family when hers wasn't there for her. She was my best friend.

Ten years of my life are intertwined with her. I can't look through pictures of any given year without many of them being of her, and then her and her family. I used to love talking to her, because even though I have other friends, no one understood my history like she did, and vice versa. We knew each other's families. I was there when her stepfather did horrible things. She was there when my parents got divorced, then when my mom got remarried. I knew what things were like and why with her sister, and she knew what things were like and why with my brother. As a friend, she is irreplacable. I might be able to make other friends. I might connect with other people. But you can't replace ten years. You can't replace being friends with someone for that long. You get to know someone.

That's why I know, to some extent, what has gone wrong. But this isn't about what went wrong. It's to say goodbye. To say I loved you, you were my friend. I will never forget you. There will never be a friend like you in my life. I'll never forget you. How could I? Ten years of memories and pictures won't let me. I will miss you. I will miss your daughters desperately. I hope everyone understands when I don't really want to talk about you, because it is painful for me. I'd rather pretend like I don't care. Maybe people will think that I'm sentimental or weird for caring so much for a friend, but for me friends are hard to come by and much, much harder to lose. But the time really has come for us to say goodbye.

Goodbye old friend. I'll think of you.