Can we hang out sometime?

It was some time during winter break years ago I met this girl at school who liked all the the things that I liked, and hated most things I hated. She was really cool, and I was really not.

She invited me out to parties, get togethers, family reunions, but I turned them all down.

Y'see I was under strict supervision. My ins and outs were monitored, my time away from home tagged and jotted with precision.

We could only hang out afterschool for volunteering programs, theatre, or some other extracurricular activity. I joined everything she did.

I was on my way to what seemed to be an Ivy League future intended for the rich and the famous, and so was she. She had a lot of friends, I did too I guess. It was more out of association that they hung out with me than hanging out with me for me. She also had several best friends whom I always held higher than me in her esteem.

I never had a best friend.

Because of my upbringing, I never had the chance to even know what a best friend or a true friend even meant. But I thought this friendship was the closest thing.

I was wrong.

I was very wrong, but that isn't what hurts me. The fallout of our friendship was equally my fault as it was hers. Growing up and neglect tends to seperate people, y'know?

But I had another friend who was very dear to me, like the first she had a best friend already, and I didn't rank in that category.

But she was the best friend I ever had.

I was jealous of her best friend, because I wanted to be considered THE best friend. How concieted I was.

It came to the point I was almost angry at her for not having that spot available to me. I wanted to tell her "Why am I not enough? What makes him better than me?" But I knew that they went through much more than she and I have together. They truly deserved to be best friends.

When she graduated everyone of course says they'll keep in touch, but they never do. I participated in that lie on more than one occassion, but she was different. She didn't write in my year book "See you soon!" or "Keep in touch," or "Can we hang out sometime?"

She said; "we're getting sushi, every friday, every week, you better be there."

The night before she told me how she had found her so called best childhood friends drifted away from her almost immediately after the graduation ceremony prefering instead to hang out without her. I don't really remember what was said, but it must have been something, because she's not one to offer this kind of thing lightly. She, her true best friend, and I would strive to meet up every friday during summer before her best friend went off to study medicine.

But that didn't happen.

It was August. It was 3:00AM when they called me. I was up doing whatever. Her childhood friends asked me to sit down, already quite hysterical.

"You need to make sure you're in a safe place" she said, "are you in a safe place?"

"You're starting to scare me," I said "what's wrong?"

"Are you sitting down?"

"Yes"

"-----'s gone"

"What?"

"She's dead- It was around 2:00 AM- she got hit by a car. She was dead on site."

It echoed in my head over and over again. She's dead, she's gone. My friend was dead. My friend was gone. We'd never eat sushi on friday. We'd never get our driver's liscence together. We'd never see eachother again.

Five years later this still echoes in my head August to August. Year after year.

No one talks about it, I don't blame them. Everyone has lived their life to honor her memory, her best friend became a doctor. I've been left behind, but I'm still trying to make something of my life. I try to live for her.

I found more reasons to live.

I found more reasons to be happy.

I found more purpose to my existence.

I found peace with my family and love in my life.

But it hurts. I miss her everyday and I wonder often what she'd be doing at these events in my life.

There was something I wrote in a text to her that I never pressed send, because I knew she already had a precious friend.

I don't regret not sending it. I don't regret anything from that time, anymore. But I just wanted to say that friends, real friends, are the most precious relationships you'll ever have.

The only thing I wish I said to her was that she was my precious friend. The best friend that I had ever had, and maybe would ever have, and that I loved her. She was my friend. My real friend. I was lucky to have known her for any amount of time at all.

Please to anyone reading; tell them you love them. Tell them you care. Because today everyone has lost a friend, some to sickness, some to suicide, some to a tragic accident but the lucky few still have them.

Live to find them or live to cherish their memory. Please. Live. Because you are someone's precious friend, even if you don't realize it.