Life | Friendship | Love

I Lost My Nakama

I loved her. The term best friend feels tepid and lacking. I won’t mention it again.

Perhaps silence is the natural progression of most friendships, but this was more than that, it had a sense of permanence to it. Cemented in years of memory-making. Two years on it still feels wrong, I’m still fractured by it. With no one way to reunite the pieces of me.

Something in the air tells me that in an alternate universe we are still together. I find solace in knowing that there is a version of us still fighting the world together. Envy in knowing that it’s not me.

Just writing about her in the past tense is horrendous. I feel a lump growing in my throat with every word. I’m reminded, she’s gone.

Almost a decade of togetherness. Followed by nothing. Absolutely nothing. How could this be? How could the most consistent person in my life completely disappear from it without even a murmur?

The whys of it are not clear. I’m left to quietly speculate to myself as to where it all went so incredibly wrong. There was no fury, no rage, no one thing that I can point my finger at and say “yes, that’s where I fucked it all up”. The all-encompassing friendship experienced a more gradual decline. Over a period of a year or two, we became less and less. Until eventually ‘we’ did not exist at all. It all became past tense. The before times.

I often reminisce of the past times together. The relative bliss that we indulged in with one another. I wish I knew then what I know now.

When the memories run in my mind like an old movie brimming with nostalgia, I feel a sudden urge to abruptly cut the scene. Jump in like a mad director and shake myself. Tell myself that this is all limited. You do not have forever. This will be over. She will become someone that you used to know.

If I had known that our futures would be separate would it have brought us to a different place? Would you still be my confidant? I don’t know if I could have prevented such a subtle death. By God, I wish I could have.

I can comprehend that the vehicles which carry us through this life would inevitably end up on different roads. Placing both space and difference between us. I can’t though, understand the nothingness. How cold it has become. Was walking away completely inevitable too? Or could we still share something? However infinitesimal, just the essence of before?

My last message to you I will stand by forever. You need never walk alone. I will always love you.

April 2021

Delilah Brass