The first night I met you, you only knew how to shout. I was best friends with your roommate at the time, and she brought you to movie night.
You were funny. Laugh-out-loud, outrageously funny. And with your blond pixie cut and snarky graphic tee, I thought you were cool too. I knew I wanted to be your friend within ten minutes.
For the next six months, I’d hope that your roommate would bring you to grilled cheese lunches or late-night Meijer runs. For the next six months, I’d hoped to be lucky enough to see you, and at some point during that, I realized that you wanted to see me too.
By a year later, we were living across the hall from each other, but we practically lived together. We spoke in an inscrutable dialect of inside jokes and Buzzfeed Unsolved quotes, and I would’ve passed a pop quiz on your sock drawer’s organization. And after our late night, teary-eyed talks staring at the dorm ceiling, you knew that I’d always felt like I was people’s second choice, and you knew how much it meant to me that you chose me first.
But you decided to transfer at the end of the semester, and when we were told to go home in March 2020, our time together ended three months early. We agreed that this wouldn’t be the end, that we wouldn’t let go of something so precious so easily. We agreed that we would try.
The restrictions eased in June, and we decided to try to meet up. I made the three hour drive to your parents house, and since you were supposed to help your parents landscape, we planted baby sweet potato vines around the back patio. When we had a private moment, you apologized that we didn’t do anything fun, but I insisted that I didn’t mind. I decided to see it as you inviting me into your life, asking me to pay witness to the rhythms of your life.
The next school year, we agreed to call on Tuesday nights. I’d wrap myself in the blanket you gave me, brew mint tea, and gossip for two hours. You told me it was hard living alone after transferring to a new school, so you appreciated our weekly talks.
The next summer, I went to your parents house again, and you asked if I wanted to go to the county fair. When I said yes, you said that’d be perfect because you had wanted to go with your sister and didn’t realize it was the weekend I was visiting. We screamed on the rides and laughed and shared elephant ears under a red, white, and blue tent.
We talked on some Tuesday nights that fall, but as your classes intensified and you grew closer with your Indiana friends, I heard from you less and less. You didn’t disguise the fact that you were canceling to see other people, and I tried my best to be happy for you. After you canceled six weeks in a row, I stopped texting to ask if you were free, though I still kept my Tuesday nights free for four months. But you never called. I saw TikToks where people talked about how they talk to their best friends once every few months, and I hoped that would be us. Though eventually, I filled my Tuesday nights with other commitments, but it still felt like a betrayal.
That summer, I asked if you wanted to meet up again. It was practically tradition. You said yes, and I drove three hours to your parents house, not thinking about how you never offered to come to me. Your dad made us mint mojitos with dinner, but the next morning, I had to ask you if I could have something to eat for breakfast.
The last time I saw you was last fall. Your family was seeing Come From Away, and you asked if I wanted the spare ticket. Since I already had one, I asked if you wanted to get dinner. You gave me the address of this tapas place where I could meet your family.
You had a falling out with some friends the night before, so you spent about thirty minutes complaining about how hard it was to find good friends. I withheld some sharp remarks and just said, “I’m sorry.” You spent the rest of the night talking to your cousin, and I watched.
These days, you’ve started posting a lot on your Snapchat story, and I know that means you’re lonely. They’re all videos of your dog, never friends, and I can’t help but wonder who you spend your time with. More so, I wonder why you let go of us.
Reflecting on my past relationships, I feel at peace with almost all of them, including the ones that ended on terrible terms. You’re the only place I never got closure, and I know I never will.
But for the first time this month, when I called someone else my best friend, I didn’t think of you. I didn’t think it was a betrayal or a declaration. I just thought about the person who has become my best friend, their smiling face and their kind eyes and everything they meant to me.
They say that some friendships aren’t meant to last forever, and some people come into your life for a season, and as you enter into new seasons, you find new people. I may never know what happened with you, but I have people in my life now that are helping me through this season, this moment. Maybe that, with everything that it is, is closure enough.
Tiffany Kajiwara graduated from Calvin in 2022 with majors in literature and writing. Now, she continues to live in Grand Rapids and works at Baker Academic Publishing as a marketing assistant. In her free time, she enjoys crocheting, thrifting, and psychoanalyzing cartoon characters.
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100% relatable!! It always hurts a little more when you can’t get that closure with lost friends.
Well-written