We thought that we would be friends forever. We thought that nothing would ever come between us. We thought that no matter what, we would be there for each other. Nothing ever did come between us in the end, except for space. Even when we parted, we thought that would be ok. We still had hope for us. The hope slowly faded away. It faded until there was none left. 

It was a warm spring day on the day we decided to be friends forever. The sun was shining and the birds were chirping. As every 8-year-old thinks, nothing mattered except for us. The world revolved around us. We were in our own little bubble that no one could pop.

“Let’s make a contract,” my best friend said. Confused about what she meant. 

I asked, “What for?” 

“To make sure that we will always be friends. We can’t let anyone come between us no matter what.” I said ok thinking that it wasn’t useful because I knew that we didn’t need a contract to keep us together.

We met in the summer before 2nd grade. Every single day was spent with each other. She was like a sister. Never did we fight for longer than 30 minutes. She was my best friend forever. She was the person that I could tell anything and everything. She was my Tweedledum. It was unconditional. I knew that we were going to be those two old ladies that you see in the mall laughing and making fun of each other. I knew that we would do everything together. Or I thought I knew. I thought I could be sure of what was to come. How was I supposed to know that she was going to leave our school? 

We make the contract. We write: “We promise to forever be friends no matter what.” We even wrote our signatures at the bottom to make it official. An official document securing our friendship. The 8 years old us didn’t know any better. We thought that the worst to come would be picking someone else for a school project. We thought of that moment as a betrayal to one another. I thought that I broke your heart. I thought it was the end. That's what I thought losing you would feel like. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t how I made you feel that day. It was losing you. When I lost you it felt like I lost a part of my heart. Losing you made me realize what we had that no longer exists. What I want back. 

I look over at my buzzing phone and see her name pop up. I picked up to her crying.

“What’s wrong?” I asked worriedly.

“I’ve just had a horrible day and I’ve just been walking around because I don’t want to be at home,” she said through sniffles.

“Do you wanna come over?” I asked in hope of brightening her mood.

“Yes please, thank you,” She managed to utter out, sounding relieved.

I miss the time when she would call me when she was sad. I was the first person she thought to call. Now we both have new people. 

I thought that it was you that made us fall apart. I was sad and hurt that you would do this to me. As we went on living our lives apart I realized that it was me. It was me who made us drift. It was me who left you. It was me who hurt you. You never did anything but love me. We tried. We tried to stay close. But we didn’t try hard enough. Now I've lost hope. I’ve lost hope that we will ever get back to where we were. How were we supposed to know what was going to happen? Why couldn’t someone have prepared us for what was to come? All we needed was a reminder. A reminder that a bubble can pop. But it can be remade. We never remade that bubble. Every day I wish we had. I wish that we could’ve not given up. Given up on a friendship that was supposed to be forever.