For nearly three years now there's been a little hole in my heart and I aimed to mend it myself last week.

Three years ago my best friend (not a best friend who has ever been mentioned on this webpage) and I decided to move in together. I had just purchased my first house and her fiance had just broken off his first engagement--she couldn't/didn't want to stay in the house she was renting and I was more than happy to share my home with her.

We moved in. I had two labs, she had a beagle...it was a nightmare. My dogs were wild beasts and her dog wasn't house broken. You can imagine how I felt when her dog decided to pee on my bed! Bills weren't getting paid on time, and instead of sitting down and talking about it, I left bitchy notes on the counter--attempting to ease the poison of the note by writing in pink ink. I wasn't totally myself. I had stress from my new job,we used to work at Victoria's Secret (as well as another place) together prior to me finishing college. Finally, in the "real world" I realized that a) even though I was making a lot more money I had a mortgage now b) I couldn't really go out like we used to.

And so, slowly...our communication started breaking down. She got a new boyfriend and it became "me" against "them". There were times, when I know if I had just apologized, or if she had done something different we wouldn't have ended on the terms that we did. Her car was reposessed with one of my favorite shoes in the back of her car and I flipped out! I wasn't concerned with the fact that she was in such dire straights...I was pissed over my shoe!!! (Now I shake my head at this). It was one of the last straws.

I came home from work one day and all of her stuff was out of the house. No note, no nothing. I remember calling at her and screaming at her on the phone. Never in my life had I had so much rage and never had I expressed it like this...like a baby.

Three years passed. Slowly. I heard through middle men that she had gotten pregnant. That she had her baby, that she married the baby's father. When the baby was born, I sent a card to her mom's house because I didn't know where she was living. I put my return address on the card but I had never heard from her--I assumed (and still assume) that she didn't want to talk to me. I recently caught word where she was working. It consumed my mind. I needed to talk to her. I miss(ed) her, I would look at our scrapbooks, of all our wacky pictures. I would think of our friendship of about 6 years and working in such "interesting" locations together and I felt the need to speak with her become urgent.

I got into the car last Monday and I drove to the mall. I walked past the store in which she worked and I felt nervous. What if she yelled at me to get out? What if she just said, "Oh, it's you?" I went into Bath and Body Works and bought a candle and I decided to go home.

I walked past the store again and forced myself to go in. She greeted me with a smile. She looked more gorgeous than ever. I was envious of the fact that she had had a baby and looked sooo spectacular. She had the same huge grin, the same giggle and the same awesome fashion sense. She was the same, and yet totally different. She showed me pictures of the cutest two year old you've ever seen, she talked about people who used to be my friends too, she told me how her sisters were, how her mother was...filling in the recent past.

As I left the store with her number in my hand, I felt relieved. I had accomplished something I probably would've never had the nerve to do. I'm not really used to people hating me...particularly for several years. And just as she was the same and different, so am I...and I doubt that we'll ever really be friends agains but it was just so good to see her.

I wish that would could just erase the time and the gap that it has created and go back to laughing, poking people in the nostrils, yelling "Olive Juice" at the top of our lungs, drink so many Long Island Iced Teas that we would start dropping the glasses on the floor, wake up moaning about our "lumpy heads" (we tended to be clumsy drunks)--
but...

we probably can't. I'm trying not to be sad about that and continue moving on.