August 13, 2024
It’s my childhood best friend’s birthday today, and I sent her annual birthday message out into the void.
It makes me flash back to the tender age of 10 when we first met. We didn’t like each other at first, which I recognize now as a juvenile jealousy for a classmate who seemed so elegant, so pretty, so smart at such a young age. Even now, I remember her clearly. Eyes sky blue and hair strawberry blonde, fine strands slipping through my fingers as I wove it into a braid. I can remember her laugh, bright and airy, and the oversized Beatles shirt she used to wear. I remember the way she used to link her arms around mine, skipping as we walked and pointing out our lucky numbers. Hers 13, mine 11. I remember the two moles on her neck that she used to claim were her vampire bites. I remember our hours-long phone conversations and the hundreds of letters we sent in the mail over the course of several years, now sitting in a box in my closet, as she hopped from one west coast town to another and my family shifted from the mountains to the gulf.
But I also remember the silent storms over her head at recess that struck with no warning, leading to achingly unexplained silent treatments. The dissolution of her intelligent young mind to something tortured, which led her to drop out of high school. I remember her anecdotes of self-inflicted harm that led to the inevitable hospital visits, the assurance of don’t worry, it’s okay, really. I remember the pinks and blue hues that began to cover the golden blonde hair I had always admired. I remember, when I finally reconnected with her years after we had both moved away, the glint of scars on her arm. We were 19 then, and I felt the distance between us in the polite smiles and growth spurts we’d had since we’d last met, and yet, her hair was just as yellow, her laugh just as bright as I’d remembered.
It’s interesting how deeply childhood friendships can impact you. In middle school she was my universe. I started a novel inspired by her when I was 11, a story about a girl who secretly had the ability to transform into a fiery bird. I wrote poetry about her in my college writing classes, digging back into memories that were so painfully nostalgic. For years, this friendship was my proof that platonic soulmates could exist in a world that so greatly prioritizes romance. It felt, in a lot of ways, that she was my better half, back when the idea of soulmates felt simple and possible.
And then the seasons changed and we lost all contact. Her phone number changed, her socials were cleared, and when I searched for her name, every avenue came up blank. She existed in my life only in my memories, and all I had to remember our friendship was the box of letters gathering dust in my bedroom.
But every year, August the thirteenth rolls around, and I look up her old number in my phone or the Facebook page she hasn’t touched in years, and I think back to the promise we made years ago that we’d be Best Friends For Life And Death. And I send her a message I know she probably will never see.
“Happy birthday”
