The ‘Best Friend'

It's funny how you can meet someone and barely know them, yet you feel as if you have been friends for a lifetime. That was how if felt when I met my best friend the first year of high school. She was in my group for orientation and we immediately hit it off. We listened to the same music, liked the same clothes, and even shared a love of Edward from Twilight. We sat together at lunch and talked on the phone for at least an hour every day. People even said we looked alike!

After being absent from school for a week because of the flu I was excited to get back to school and see my best friend -- but something had changed. When we met in our first class together, my excited greeting was shrugged off and ignored.

That day at lunch my best friend was nowhere to be seen. The next few days, things got weirder and weirder. Phone calls and texts went ignored and Facebook posts deleted. I had felt that I was shut out of my best friends' life for no apparent reason.

The following weeks were harder. She had a new best friend, while I was alone thanks to the supposed rumors she had spread about me. I felt like I just wanted to lock myself in my room and cry. Every once in a while my best friend would reemerge to say hi but then would relapse into silence.

I began to feel more frustrated. Little things that were normally insignificant, like my mom telling me to clean my room, became a battle. I felt as if I was constantly trying to win my best friend over, but I was never good enough. Once I realized that I wasn't the one with the problem I could relax. Friends who stood by me helped me realize that you can't make people like you and that I shouldn't blame myself.

The saying time heals all is partly true. I am healed, but I haven't forgotten. We still see each other in the hallway. Instead of crying when I get the cold shoulder, I have learned to just smile and walk by, not letting it get to me. To this day, I still don't know what happened that week I was gone but I am happy with the people who like me no matter what and for me, that is enough.