At least once a month, I'll have a dream about the same childhood friend.
We coercively became friends when I was 12. She was 10. Coming from a single parent household with no siblings, she stayed over at my house every weekend, sometimes more. Eventually, I called her "one of my best friends" up until my sophomore year of college.
I can't remember if we even shared anything in common. We kind of just literally grew up together, and grew up to have coinciding interests, and have almost the same opinion on things. The best thing about her was that she gave me a lot to look forward to in spending time laughing with her and forgetting about the uncomfortable phases of pre-teen life.
In many ways, she was my other half. Rather than feeling like an "older sister" to her or even just a church friend, I felt that she was someone I needed by my side in order to feel like it was okay to be myself. The irony is that we never talked about personal things, which bothered me as we got older. Even after all that time together, I never knew what exactly she thought about having been raised by a single father, or being the only child, or the kinds of things that make her cry at night. I also didn't share any personal things with her, but not intentionally. It just became the norm of our relationship. Her biggest stressors to my knowledge was doing well in school and getting into a good college.
Although my college experience changed me, I felt that our relationship even with the distance remained the same when I came back home for breaks. It wasn't until she went into college that I noticeably felt differences in our relationship. She became flaky, making a lot of empty "we should" promises, and ultimately transformed into a different person. The once-wallflower became a sorority girl who drinks until she blacks out, barely wears clothes, and likes to dance at parties.
I started to back away, uninterested in the turn of our friendship.
It wasn't until a few years ago when I realized that I was the one being judgmental, projecting my fears of losing our friendship onto her. Because the reality is that she only flaked once in the 8 years we were friends, and she made a lot of "we should" promises that I failed to follow through on, and the few times that we did hang out post-high school was all the same except what went through my head. I feared that she would judge me. I was maybe too bland, too holy, or a reminder of her boring past. But she wouldn't have reached out if she really thought that way. I was the one insecure of myself.
I think my recurring dreams about her are a consequence of my guilt. I noticed that the very rare times that I reached out to her via social media, it was always an apology, for what she might not even realize. And despite having believed that we never really knew each other, I recently found a diary entry from high school that said that I truly felt so fortunate and blessed to have her in my life. I don't have many regrets in life, but letting our friendship die the way it did is one of them.
