I was uncharacteristically busy yesterday.

So here are two letters, one for yesterday and one for today.

Day 14: Someone you've drifted away from.

Dear someone I've drifted away from,

Technically, I'm breaking the rules with this letter because I'm not writing it to "someone" but many people. But I figure it's probably flexible. I make my own rules for this things anyway. Kinda like how I skipped yesterday.

Anyway. I went to grade school with the people I considered to be my best friends for 9 years (most of them, anyway.) I think it's safe to say that was where I'd built my life. Those were the people I got close to, told my secrets to, leaned on for support. Had crushes on, went to school dances with, went through life with. Those were the friends I thought I'd have forever. But it didn't really work out that way.

I went to a different high school. That's exactly what happened; we just drifted away (sidebar: in sentences like those, I just wanna use a comma. I know it breaks the rules of grammar, but I just feel like it would more accurately express what I want to say without the hoity toityness of a semicolon and without the jarring break of two sentences.) I made new friends because I had to (and I'm glad it happened. They made me me.) And they grew, too. It happens. It's nobody's fault.

Sometimes my mom would come home and say "So and so saw me at the grocery store. She said to tell you hi and that she misses you!" and I would always kinda scoff and think if they missed me so much they'd have kept in touch more than just when they saw my mom and thought it was a nice thing to say. I did keep in touch with a few, for a while. One of them I still talk to occasionally. I'd consider her a friend. It's just nice to hold on to that part of my life in some way. It makes me kind of sad to live in the Perry Meridian world sometimes, and not be able to share all the stories I accumulated over the first 14 years of my life/education. Or not be able to express what they meant to me or how it really was or something. It sometimes sucks to not be able to say things like how I've been friends with so and so for 18 years or since 2nd grade or something and we're still friends today. I don't really have anyone like that anymore.

But in the end, I guess I'm not that sad. Because looking at it now, I kinda feel like I was so, so young then and I didn't really know those people---who they really were, or are now---then. Or maybe I was too young to get it. Either way. The memories are still there, even if the physical presence has kind of faded. It's one of those, look at an old photograph and smile, kind of nostalgias. And that's nice. Untarnished. We smile at each other in the grocery store or write cute messages on Facebook walls, and there's an understanding that we both know, that we share something. The way it was is not the way it is, but I'm ok with that. We all grow and change and let go and hold on constantly, and that's the way the world is. I think I'm better for it.

Love, Lauren.