We were twelve. We ran around the green, grassy fields, unaware of any chance of us growing old. We were fourteen. We rode our bikes to convenience stores to get soda for an unending night, uncaring of any responsibilities or obligations. We were seventeen. Reunited after three years, we drank until the sun came up. Blissfully unforgetting and beautifully unafraid, facing the years to come.

Caleb is one of my oldest friends and my most loyal. We met in sixth grade and immediately hit it off. Our days consisted of messing with our teachers who were like parents to us, giggling like the kids we were about who might like who, and staring down the clock, trying our hardest to intimidate it to tick faster so we could be free spirits on the playground.
Recess was the absolute best. Caleb, our friend John, and I were notorious for tormenting the girls we wouldn’t admit we liked. We’d sit in a little grassy circle in the middle of our own little world. We were the kings of that playground. Everything was so beautiful and full of life and color. Our kingdom was the size of two football fields, riddled with our friends, equipment to play on, and hills to climb. Nothing mattered to us. The only thing we held close was the promise of never growing up. Never changing. But those fields would someday be overgrown and forgotten.
Years came and went. It was eighth grade and we grew more inseparable with each day gone by. We were taller, our voices deeper, our hair longer, and our attitudes sharper. We were pissed off at anyone and anything unwilling to submit to whatever ridiculous belief or wish we worshipped. We hated our parents and no one understood us. Screaming was our most cherished hobby. We didn’t care about anything except our loyalty to each other.
We’d spend every weekend together. We would ride our bicycles and curse at strangers. We would spit at God and s*** on the Earth. He was a leader and I followed him faithfully. We were both edgy pricks, but there was always a deeper layer underneath him that I didn’t fully understand. I was always angry at everything, but he went further than teenage angst. He hated everything. But we had each other’s companionship and it was all we needed. The only thing we held close was the promise of never growing apart. Never drifting. But the distance of an entire country can prove to be a good divider.
Time still carried on. A measure of three years passed until I saw my best friend again. Our reunion was an episode straight out of The Twilight Zone. We were no longer kids with dirty knees or teenagers with dirty scowls.We were older and kinder. We grew up as boys and now faced each other as men, but we were still old ghosts of who we were. Grown, but not grown up.
We visited our old playground. Our rotting youth. How dismayed we were when we hardly recognized it. Vegetation had grown and had overcome the entire field. The equipment had toppled in on itself. Even the sky was grey, an unfamiliar aspect for a place that used to be so alive. We just stood there in silence, neither of us willing to acknowledge that our childhood had grown with us. We tried navigating through the overgrowth, but it proved to be difficult trying to navigate through weeds up to your knees. We pointed out where things used to be and tried imagining it in our minds. It was all gone. We faced the terrifying realization that the only remaining image of the majority of our childhood now only existed in thought. Never again would we ever see our kingdom full of life or color. We silently wept.
All that mattered to us was never growing old. Never dying. But who we were died along with those fields and who we are we were only just discovering.