The past always comes back to haunt you, if you don’t have things resolved. For a while, I thought it was well in the past that I lost my childhood best friend. She had decided to stop the friendship, so to speak, sometime in my second year of university at UCI. After trying to track her down and confronting her, thinking everything was okay, she finally let it out that she was tired of my drama and that I had such a good life but didn’t know it. She said she wasn’t wanting a friendship that was too deep, that I was too overemotional for her, and that I had it good. She said she only wanted a shopping buddy, not someone who constantly makes her think.

At the time, I was very angry, and appalled, and hurt. I was going through a time when it was a huge struggle for me to re-define my relationship with my mother, and I didn’t really have any good girlfriends I can talk to about it all. I suppose I used her as a crying shoulder far too often, and eventually she got sick of it. I didn’t realize all she wanted was a fair-weather friend. Now, looking back at it, I know that it was during a time that I wasn’t most proud of myself, and indeed I did take a lot of the good things I had for granted. She said that I had a good boyfriend (Dave), financially supportive parents, a nice studio apartment, good looks, etc. What was I complaining about? To her, I was merely acting like a whiny rich kid who doesn’t know what she’s got.

It took me a long time to let the bitterness out of my system. It took me a long time to forgive her — and myself — for letting the relationship go. She was my “best” friend since we were in the 8th grade, and despite going to different high schools, we kept in touch and remained best friends until halfway through college. We went out of our ways to see each other, sometimes driving hours just to spend the day together. And I realized how much I had missed her. She’s a good person and I can’t say I blame her for getting sick of how I was acting.

I haven’t thought of her in a long time. It’s been close to 8 years since this happened, and we haven’t talked since. There was a time a few years ago that I found her on friendster and wrote a message of love to her, saying that I hope she is doing well and that I hold no remorse or ill feelings that we were ever good friends. I didn’t hear anything back, so I assumed that she still wasn’t having it and still saw me as the over-dramatic girl she once knew. I let it go.

This past week, she crept back into my life. After not having thought of her for years and years, after fighting the demons I had to fight when she left me, I came across that stupid “People You Might Know” thing on facebook. There, blaring into my screen and making me a deer caught in headlights, was a wedding photo of her. All I had to do was go to facebook and there it was. I didn’t even have to look for her. And then suddenly, all the old feelings came rushing back, and I found myself going through her photos — especially the ones where our mutual friends from junior high and high school commented on, and I saw how happy she looked in her wedding dress, married to the man I assume is the man of her dreams. She just got married this summer, and it was a small wedding, and I wasn’t there. Granted, she wasn’t there for mine, but it was by her choice and not mine. When I was a girl, I always assumed that we would be at each other’s weddings. I didn’t allow myself to think about it when I was planning our wedding last summer, but seeing her wedding photos made me really miss her. I’m glad she’s happy, and I was surprised to find myself a little angry and a little hurt. Still. After all these years.

After momentarily beating myself up for still feeling the negative feelings of the past, I decided to make a shift in thinking and just “observe” my feelings, without judging them as good or bad. I saw myself feeling angry that I was “cheated” out of a best friend. I saw myself feeling sad that we were no longer in each other’s lives, and she was one of the last childhood friends I had. I saw myself feeling hurt that she could throw away years and years of closeness, just like that, while I was going through something so big in my own life and needed a friend to talk to. And while I was “observing” these feelings run in and out of me, I felt a certain peace come over me. When I wasn’t judging whether or not these feelings were bad or good, it gave me the freedom to let myself feel them, and then move on.

And now, what do I see now? I suppose I will always have images of her haunt my life. We have too many mutual friends to not let this happen again. Now, I am feeling truly happy for her, yet sad that I can’t talk to her. Now, I’m not angry or hurt, but I have to admit that I’m a little disappointed. Disappointed that after all these years, the wall that separates us seems to not only get stronger, but bigger and taller.

I hope she knows that I’m happy for her.