Lisa was my best friend from the time I was 11 until I was 16. She moved in the house across the street the summer before I started 6th grade and she started 3rd. From the day she moved in, we were instant best friends. We went to the movies that very afternoon. Because we were three years apart we were never in the same school. We hung out pretty much every day that first summer. When school started we still hung out as much as we could, I mean we lived across the street from each so it wasn’t that hard. Sometimes we got busy with school and even though we lived across the street from each other we didn’t see each other that much. But when we did it was always like no time had passed. We used to love to go to target and then convince my mom to let us have a sleepover, and then lisa’s mom usually went along. But her mom was strict and for some reason it seemed the main thing she was strict about was Lisa doing things with me. We had to beg her to let Lisa come with me to my my dad’s parent’s house that was only forty-five minutes away. And she wouldn’t let us spend the night down there. So Lisa going with us for the weekend to my mom’s parent’s house in NC was definitely out of the question, as was lisa ever going with us on a summer vacation. I never understood that and still don’t, but Lisa’s mom was a single mom and tended to be sort of paranoid. She was a big worrier. But I find it interesting and somewhat hurtful that Lisa has now gone on vacations with other friends. As we got older, even though we lived across the street from each other it was hard to hang out a lot. That’s the only time I felt that our 3 year age difference actually affected our friendship. Then it was only because we didn’t have classes or extra-curricular activities in common. When we would get to hang out we always picked up right where we left off. The older we got the longer we would sometimes go without seeing each other. It was spring break of my junior year of high school and I had tried to make plans with lisa for her 14th birthday. Her little sister had answered the door when I had gone over to their house and said lisa wasn’t at home. I wanted to make plans to celebrate her birthday but I couldn’t get in touch with her. I was checking my cell phone messages later that week, and I had one from Lisa:
“ Hey, it’s me. I don’t think we should be friends anymore ... we’ve just grown apart. So... just don’t call or come over cause that’d just make it harder. Bye.”
I was at a loss. I didn’t understand. Yeah we hadn’t hung out in a while. But I thought we’d pick back up like we always did, right where we’d left off. Lisa had started hanging out with a girl that had moved in down the street from us. She was a year younger than lisa. It seems that their friendship started much like ours did except that I never ended a friendship to start a new one. The end of my friendship with Lisa was hard to accept. I tried pretty soon after she left that voicemail, to talk to her and try and save our friendship, but she didn’t want to. At the beginning of that summer I tried again, and I thought for a split second that we might be friends again. I went over to her house and we ended up watching tv and hanging out for the afternoon. But at the end of the afternoon, she said she didn’t think we could be friends again. I was going on a summer trip with a student ambassador program people 2 people. It was a 3 week trip and something I was really looking forward to. Lisa said that since I was going on that trip that it didn’t make sense to try to be friends again. That was a weird excuse since I was only going to be gone for three weeks. She didn’t want to be friends. To this day I don’t understand what happened.
Lisa and I still live across the street from each other. I’ll be outside with my dog, buddy, and sometimes I’ll see her getting home and it's as if we never even knew each other. It is so weird. It is hard not to discount a 5 year friendship after it ended like that. This past spring Lisa’s dog, daisy was loose and I got her and brought her to their house. Lisa answered the door. I told her daisy had gotten out. She said thanks and shut the door. The person that shut that door so quickly used to be my best friend. That is incredibly hard. When we were friends, I remember being worried about not being able to make absolute certain that our friendship would last forever. And it didn’t. Now Lisa and I have not been friends just as long as we were. I don’t think about her much, but when I walk out of my house and see hers, sometimes it is impossible not to.
This has been on my heart lately and I just really needed to write this out.
