| Sometimes I think we let our own conception of what is around us elude us for many years, until we realize that we have failed to miss it. So goes with my best friend, who left me on the last day of school last year. Her boyfriend had just broken up with her, and she was leaving for Alaska the next day. We sat on the sidewalk talking, mostly small talk and so on. And I never really thought about us, as friends, being through. Her and I would no longer share jokes or be there for one another because we would be in completely different worlds, with completely different people.
But this one thing bothered me most of all. It was the last moment I ever saw her again.. as we walked to the bus parking lot together, and classmates of hers ran up to her and hugged her goodbye, people who had rejected her all year, now there only for that one last bit of sympathy to pacify every little ounce of guilt that they possessed for not caring. I stood to the side with a grave look on my face as I approached my bus. I turned to Kristine, and trying to look as enthusiastic as possible, several feet away from her, I smiled and said, "BYE!" I then watched as she walked out of my life with people that only were with her because they had to be.
I befriended her on sight, I invited her to concerts, I asked her to spend the week at my house and go with my family to the beach, I listened to her --never butting in until her voice was sound. I knew who she was and I knew that underneath the enigma that covers me, she somehow knew me too. So I wonder why our goodbyes were coated with fake plastic candy and sugary smiles that both of us couldn't stand.
I didn't even think about that then though. I had it in my heart that she and I would never meet again, so why bother? But our goodbyes were so temporary, not even like we were going to be apart for just a summer, or a week. But that was over three months ago, and I still wonder where she's at and what she is doing and with who. What boy has replaced her boyfriend, the same one who I sit next to and listen to just as I did for her. And each time he says her name, I see a part of him.. just a infintesimily small fraction of him jumping into me and screaming for me to return her to him.
My other friend of six years is moving away in a couple of days, and we look at it in sorrow, never remembering what good we shared in those six years or even in the past couple of months as we loved each other, but instead what will become of us. And I feel it all happening all over again.. again and gain. The pain. | 
