There was a time in my life when I thought friends last forever. Maybe not all friends, but some friends did.  Especially best friends, they would always be there no matter what. I know now that’s not true. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been best friends with someone. It doesn’t matter how many things you’ve experienced in life for the first time together. It doesn’t matter how many times a day you talk to someone. It doesn’t matter if you hang out with someone every day, every week. They can still leave. They can still leave without an explanation. Like nothing happened. Like you haven’t been best friends with them for 10 years. You’ll ask yourself what happened or why they left. If you did something wrong. But you won’t get an answer. 

This story has neither a happy ending nor a sad one. Some would say bittersweet. To every end, there’s a beginning, let’s start there. We met on the first day of kindergarten and clicked instantly. A few days later, Ava’s mom got in touch with mine and arranged a playdate with both of us. This is my first memory of hanging out with her and one of my earliest memories of elementary school all together. We had dressed up in Frozen costumes and played with her dog. Though I had been scared of dogs at the time, her dog made me less afraid and I eventually learned to love dogs. 

“When you get to high school, just know things will change. You’ll probably have different friends than the ones you do now, and that’s fine, it’s normal,” My older brother had come into my room just to talk to me and we were having a conversation about what high school would be like and what to expect. 8th grade hadn’t even started yet, the sun was still at its summer high and the birds were still chirping melodiously. He was 20 years old at the time and had always given me advice on anything going on in my life, whether it was school, boys, or friends. “But just to have you prepared you and Ava will probably not be as close in high school.”

 Ava had been my best friend for almost 10 years since Kindergarten started. We had done everything together and practically lived at each other's houses during the summer. Sometimes I could feel our friendship being strained, other times it felt like it would last. 

Throughout 8th grade, I felt we weren’t going to last, that the end of our friendship was inevitable. We both had our separate friends and nothing connecting our friend groups besides us. We were becoming different people than we were back in kindergarten, and maybe that was okay, maybe it would be fine. 

Something we had been planning out for most of middle school, was the 8th grade graduation dance. When we went dress shopping with our moms, we had been texting each other pictures of our different dresses the entire time. She helped me decide between the two dresses I couldn’t pick between and I helped her choose. Moments like this made me hope that we would last just a little longer. Like a leaf clinging to its branch right before it has to fall off.

Summer had always been ours. There wasn’t a day that went by in the summer when we weren’t at each other's house or on the phone with each other. There was never a moment we were apart. If I wasn’t sleeping, I was hanging out with her. The summer before high school was supposed to be the same. Nothing was supposed to change. If anything, it was supposed to be better, it was supposed to be the beginning of a new chapter in our lives . Going to the pool every day, sleepovers, staying up late playing games and laughing, Target trips, making TikToks, and everything else we did. But, that summer we hung out 3 times. A total of three times across three months. 

The most memorable one was when we went to Madison. There was a fair going on and my parents had let me bring Ava along. We got there and explored the fair for a bit. We made our rounds through the vendors with our strawberry lemonade and decided we needed some pictures. The pictures couldn’t just be any old pictures, they had to be good, well thought out pictures. It was important because of our photo shoot all those months ago. We said we would do it every season but we only got the chance to in the fall and winter, not spring. So now was our chance to make up for it. We walked around for a little while before we found a perfect spot to pose. It was a tall cement ledge with a grassy area and garden as the backdrop. The sun was right on the grass, making the spot look surreal . We climbed onto the ledge and set Avas phone up to take pictures. We went dress shopping after that, taking pictures of us trying on different dresses. 

This was one of the last fun memories I have of us, after that we didn’t hang out, since both of us were so busy, and we didn’t text a lot. Overtime, things between us just faded. We were great while we lasted and the memories I have of us will stay with me for a lifetime. I hope one day we will talk again and figure things out but until then, our story will remain bittersweet.