The Ties That Bind

When I think about my high school best friend, I don’t find myself nestling back into a sea of nostalgic memories filled with the good old days and how things used to be.

There is no playing of songs that were popular at the time in the background, no laughing images in soft focus, no fuzzy feelings over the little secret pacts that formed part of a history together.

Sometimes I don’t feel anything at all.

I think about those best friend years with detached recollection and indifference.

She was my best friend throughout high school and college. We were misfits who went through all the usual rites of passage everyone teenager goes through – from the mundane zits, clothes, boys -- to the potentially life threatening – weight gain, teachers and grades.

I can not remember much of the frivolity and lack of depth adolescent girls are allowed; the carefree abandon mixed with the you and me against the world (the “world” being our parents) battle cry we marched to.

I remember mostly only my feelings then.

How awkward I was. How wrongfully defiant I was in the face of all forms of authority. How rebellious and yet fearful I was of completely disobeying. My feeling of wanting to be anyone else but me.

I remember how I sensed that she had her own version of these same emotions and instead of projecting them, fed on my own to elevate herself. And how I would allow her to do so in the name of friendship.

Little personal achievements were pitted against each other to see whose was more significant; more impactful. Each slowly becoming self-absorbed with the need to outdo the other.

Maybe it was simply my own resentment that surfaced and fueled the venomous competition.

Ego. Competition. Envy. Jealousy. Resentment. Words that one would not normally use in conjunction with the words “best friends” formed the undercurrent in our oxymoron of a best friend relationship.

I never got to see if the years and the maturity that come with it would some how even out the jagged edges that marked our friendship.

We’re not friends anymore. I have not seen her, much less spoken to her for almost a decade. I had stopped shared important aspects of my life for an even a longer period.

Like many other relationships – ours was brought down by a boy. Her brother, whom I married and later became Kiddo’s Dad.

Deeper emotions of anger, blame and suspicion raged between us as we took sides that, in reality, we both had surreptitiously taken long before the break up of my marriage to her brother.

Perhaps the role of sisters-in-law, on top of the pretension of best friends, was too much to bear.

I thought of her today as I looked a photo of Kiddo that I received today. In the picture, Kiddo is in a loving embrace with little girl, a bit younger than her. Kiddo is hugging the little girl close to her and her eyes are squeezed tight from trying to convey as much emotion as a 7 year old can into a single embrace.

The little girl is Kiddo’s cousin and my former best friend’s daughter.

I looked at the photo and hoped that blood would bind our daughters together in a way that mere friendship could not for us.