Day 09 – Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted

It was middle school.  The bowels of Hell.

I hated my life. I had one friend. I hated the way I looked, dressed…my acne, my glasses.  Just two years of torture and teasing by my former friends and classmates had sent my fragile self-esteem into a nose dive.

My brother was on college visits with my dad, leaving my mom and I to find something to do.  She decided that visiting her good friend at their camper would be a great idea.  “Besides,” she informed me. “David* has a cousin about your age.”

I was oh-too-thrilled with that prospect.  If she was anything like David (who may be reading this and I’m sorry, but you used to be…well, you remember)…I wanted nothing to do with her.  If she wasn’t – well, she’d want nothing to do with me.

And so it goes that I met Julie*.

When I first saw her I figured I was done for.  There was no way anyone with those looks would want anything to do with me. She had that it factor. You know the one.  The one that screamed ‘popular’. Blonde hair, blue eyes, built like a….well, you get the idea.  A year younger than me, she was taller, and far prettier.  Yup, she’d classify me as the nerd everyone else did.  My weekend was going to suck.

But it didn’t.

And she wasn’t.

She became my best friend.  Instead of staying at David’s family’s trailer with my mom, I stayed at Julie’s.  We talked, we laughed.

She LIKED ME.  For who I was.  Not knowing anything about my life at school, she didn’t treat me like those that decided in 6th grade that I was uncool (before I got the nerd markers of acne and glasses, they must have been psychic).

I begged to go back the next weekend, and the next.  I begged for a trailer – and we got one, and a seasonal site just a few weeks later right at my birthday. Julie and I were always staying at each others trailers, sleeping in the tent. Eating Doritos and drinking hot chocolate (yes, together. Sounds yummy, doesn’t it?). Staying up into the night, never once passing gas and laughing (really, EVER).  Sneaking out to be with the boys in camp, goofing off with nothing but the light of the moon.

We were inseperable.

For 3 summers, into winters.

Then I moved.

We did really good for a couple more years.  I’d always visit when I got back to New York. Then she started college, I moved again.  My visits to NY became less frequent. Our phone calls dissipated. Then she moved to Florida.

Time and distance separated us for many years.  Then she found me again.  Called me.  Updated me on her life.  That she was expecting a baby.  For a month or two the communication resumed and then faded again.

Now, through the wonder that is Facebook we’ve found each other again.  But it’s not the same.

She was there for me at a very important point in my life.  She will always be remembered as my best friend.  She will always be counted as a best friend.  I know that if we saw each other face-to-face again it would be like old times.  That is the wonder of true friendship.

Knowing now that she’s much closer to me than Florida (she moved again), I hope to see her again sometime soon.  To meet her child, to get close to her again.

I never wanted us to drift apart.  Life had other plans.

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*Names have been changed. These people are all my friends on FB now, so they know who they are, but I never use real names without permission 😀