The people we once knew

I feel that it’s important that I write this now, before it becomes nothing but one of those fleeting feelings you get at half past midnight. Before it just becomes a passing thought or deluded dream. Or even worse, the kind of thought that comes and goes, occasionally on the tip of your tongue, but never quite makes it to paper.

And this thought comes with an old friend, many old friends, I’ve long since lost to the world and the harsh reality of life.

I’m trapped living this life that I don’t entirely know what to do with. But like anyone, I have my passings. Just like the rest of mankind, droning on outside these walls, consumed in their own worlds, I live on as I can.

I go about my day just like any other teen. I wake up in time for school, sit sleepily through the day, indulge in a few hobbies, surf the net, maybe check out some social media.

But really, this is where my thought begins; social media.

As much as I hate to admit it, I log onto Facebook daily. I can sometimes sit there for hours upon hours blankly scrolling through my newsfeed in search of nothing more than something to give me some microscopic amount of entertainment.

Whether it’s an article or an amusing picture doesn’t matter to me, as long as it fills the empty time.

But every now and then, I see a post or comment coming from an old friend. Someone who, to me, has become a distant stranger.

And there are so many of them. Faces that were once so familiar and welcoming, becoming more distant to me every day. Faces I used to recognize and knew every detail of.

But now, after a couple of moves and so many years passed with so little communication on either of our parts, they’ve become the faces of strangers.

Hayley, a girl I shared everything with, at one point my best friend, and in some ways a first love.

Because, to me that’s how friendship works isn’t it? Particularly the first friends and bonds you ever make. Outside of family, and sometimes stronger than family, they are the first ones to show you how to love another person.

So in that sense, Hayley, my former best friend, was my first love. She was my first love in the way that she was the first one to ever show me how to fully accept and appreciate a person, or how to trust a person. She was my first love in the way someone loves the friend so close to them that you share your secrets with them like a personal diary.

I have no idea who she is anymore.

This girl who I was so close to growing up, who I shared everything with, has become just another face in the background. And realizing this now, it breaks my heart.

I’ve always had social anxiety, and making friends and maintaining these friendships, for me, has always been difficult.

There have been so many incredible people I’ve met in life. So many people I felt an instant connection with. The kind of people you swear you’ll never forget, you’ll never leave behind, the kind that you want to stay in your life because of how deeply they enrich it.

I have had these people. I’ve known these people and had late night talks with them.

I’ve seen these people first thing in the morning without their hair or teeth brushed, cup of coffee or juice in hand, and bags under their eyes but still smiling.

I’ve poured out the deepest depths of my soul to these people. I’ve shown them where it hurts and they’ve done the same with me.

And these same people are some of the ones I let slip by, right through my fingers, only to slowly fade into the background with an unrecognizable trace.

And for this, I’m deeply sorry. Because each of these people, whether they know it or not, have taken a piece of me with them.

Back when I knew these people, these beautiful people, I loved them like I loved a best friend, or like I loved family.

And to think that I let them all go so easily, without ever a message or a call, it makes me so sad inside.

I want them to know, I still think of them. I still think of them just as they were when we parted ways into this big world. I want them to know that I still care about them, and that us not talking, us not being involved with one another is no fault our own.

I understand that life gets in the way, and I only hope that they understand me enough to know that I have always been terrible at keeping in contact like I know I should.

But the biggest realization here is this; how hard do I really try?

I’m just as capable of picking up the phone as they are, just as capable of sending a text before it’s too late, before they’re gone.

Hannah is the perfect example, a shining example.

Hannah and I, we were good friends back in the day. Back when we still played on the swings and monkey bars.

We had our differences, we made some stupid decisions together, we did a few things I’m not so proud of, and eventually, we moved in different directions.

But with the two of us it was different. With us, it was one of those situations where you don’t move your separate ways out of neglect, but because sometimes in life there are people that you need to let go.

For me, she was one of those people.

But regardless, years had passed since the incidents which caused our separation, and by that time we’d both likely changed entirely. We’d both likely become completely different people than what we were before.

And still I regret not reaching out to speak to her just one last time.

You see, Hannah and her mother, they died in the hospital after a fire.

She was just fourteen years old, she had her whole life ahead of her. It was only a few months before her 15th birthday.

She probably would have had it at the local skating rink, I remember how much she loved to skate.

She was bright, kind, athletic, just beautiful. She competed in pageants, played basketball, cheered, and lived. She lived just the way anyone like herself would, the way anyone her age would. She lived carefree and eager for what came next.

And just when she was at the brink, the brink of innocence and adventure and anticipation; she was taken. She, along with her mother.

And she left a trail of pain and heartbreak in her wake. The whole town cried.

I wasn’t there. I’d long since moved and we hadn’t spoken in about three years. So when the news came, and when it started blowing up my newsfeed, and when my mother told me, it felt distant.

I felt distant.

For the longest time, I actually felt guilty about not feeling guilty or sad or effected in any way by her death.

But honestly, as I’m writing this now, I’ve never felt so close to my old friend. I think this is the first time I’ve grieved her death even though over a year has passed.

And I understand it more clearly now, the sadness of her loss along with that of her mother. And I can only imagine how painful it must have been for her family to lose two of their own.

She and her mother were being treated in a hospital after the fire, but Hannah passed on first. Many of us believe that that’s what made her mother stop fighting for her life and pass on shortly after her.

And even now I still see the grief in my newsfeed from all the people she left behind.

The boy she had been dating for almost a year before she had died, he still hasn’t moved on. He still keeps her listed as his girlfriend on his profile.

All of our friends still wish her happy holidays, still cry over missing her, still tag her in posts, still hold events in her name. Her profile has become more like a shrine in her honor, I’ve seen a lot of people go there to grieve. A lot of people have poured their hearts out for her.

All this time later, and there is still a ripple.

Curtis, another old friend, he’d messaged me.

He wanted to know if I knew about her passing, he confided in me about how school the following Monday wouldn’t be the same, how it felt like some kind of nightmare he couldn’t wake up from.

He told me all this, and we’ve barely spoken since.

But in reality, before even that we’d drifted. In reality, we’d drifted even back when we still lived in the same small town and gone to the same small school.

For many years we were close friends. I was best friends with Hayley, she was considered one of the more popular girls and I was her shadow. Curtis had a crush on her for years, but like me, he was a bit of an outcast as well.

When we were younger he was one of the smaller kids in class it seemed. He wasn’t that tall and he’d always been scrawny.

Looking at pictures of him now, you’d never guess that once upon a time he was so short.

So back then, we got along just fine. We were good friends, and I’ll admit now that all this time ago I’d even had a bit of a crush on him.

But as time passed he was no longer interested in hanging out with Hayley or I, and he’d moved on to the crowd of boys. He got into basketball, and afterwards, he was never really the same person.

And then there’s Ana, the last member of our main little group.

She was always so tough and adventurous, in many ways, I envied her. You could say that she started developing early, so naturally she attracted plenty of boys and was brave enough to actually do things with them.

Nothing extreme, just an occasional kiss to whoever happened to have her full attention for the time being. But that, to me, was brave.

Back then, we were just kids. Still in elementary school and I was still a complete tomboy opposed to anything pink, so the idea of kissing a boy was strange to me.

Hell, I’m seventeen now and it’s still new to me. I’ve only recently had my first kiss.

But for her, it all seemed natural and she was so confident in it, just like most every other girl in my grade.

And even now I can remember trying to imitate them. I remember trying out make-up for the first time and trying to dress more girly, and briefly, trying to stuff a training bra a little to make it look like I had boobs. (Thankfully, it’s not a concern for me anymore.)

I was so desperate to have this sense of maturity that they had, this secret claim to some kind of early woman-hood that I lost sight of all of the morals I’d formerly stood by.

But, because all the way up until this point in my life I’d frowned upon make-up and all things girly, it came as a natural shock to my peers which lead to a lot of regret on my end.

Immediately, everyone in my grade thought there was something wrong with me and rumors flew, it was a 5th graders worst nightmare.

After I’d realized my mistake, I tried to revert back to my old ways and pretend the whole thing never happened, leaving one thing in my mind; avoid anything feminine for the rest of my life.

Of course I gave that up a while ago, but even today I still sometimes have difficulty with it all.

Sometimes, I still look in the mirror and feel inadequate. And when it comes to those more feminine things like make-up, clothes, skin care, and painting my nails, I honestly have no clue what I’m doing.

I have no idea how to make bright colors look good on me, I’m terrible with make-up- especially eye liner- I don’t even know how to straighten my hair. And in complete honesty, I’ve only recently mastered the ponytail.

These are all things I still struggle with, and to me it seemed like these friends of mine had it all down by the ages of nine or ten.

But today, I’m not so envious anymore. I don’t care that they seemed like they had it all figured out at such an early age, though I will say that I’m impressed.

I don’t care that they seemed so mature and sought after and that they always knew just what to say and do when it came to all those more girly and feminine things. All I say now is bravo.

You see, I’m glad they figured some of these things out. But at the same time, I feel sorry for them.

I feel sorry that they felt the need to grow up so quickly and subject themselves to all of these things so early. I feel bad that some of these people, who were once my closest friends, spent a great deal of their childhoods watching their weight and worrying over what others thought of them.

And this is who they are even now it seems.

Yes, we’ve grown apart and I know so little about them nowadays, but I still see this in them.

I still see it in my newsfeed, the occasional cryptic one-line post that obviously screams that something is wrong. I see it in the few conversations we have, where they unload their worries.

I see it when they post pictures, so carefully cropped and edited and blurred.

And I see it in myself, because I’ve done the same.

More than anything, I wish I could know these people again and bring this innocence back to them. I wish I had the courage to reach out to them one last time, before it’s too late. But for me, I have no idea how to say hello to them again.

Because it seems that ‘hello’ just isn’t enough to convey all these feelings.

‘Hello,’ doesn’t feel like enough to catch up on all these years and all those missed nights where one of us was crying and in pain, in need of someone, and the other wasn’t there like we always thought we would be.

So if nothing else, I choose to extend this knowledge to others. I choose to warn others to not wait until hello doesn’t seem like enough. Don’t wait until hello doesn’t cut it or until you can’t say hello at all.

And here, I choose to pass on the lessons I’ve learned. This lesson, along with everything else this life has taught me in my short time walking this earth.

No matter how short my time has been in the measurement of years, it has been long and insightful in the measurement of experience.

I am seventeen and I have seen tragedy. I’ve saved a life and had my own life saved, I’ve known a great deal of pain and happiness, and above all, I survived those nights alone when I thought I wouldn’t live to see morning.

So let me pass this on to you.