‘What was her name?’ I google in my head drive to find a picture of her face, to find her name, how I long to find her smiling face in there. The face of my dear friend of whom I don’t remember at all, but rather feel her existence in my life, and in my heart.
She arrived at my school late with no desire to create friends yet she got attached to me very fast. She was always there whenever I wanted to laugh, cry, play, and even when I just wanted to be silent and look at the other pupils in school.
The bond was not forced, it came so naturally, and the friendship blossomed that meant a great deal to me, and yet now, I can’t even remember her name. Are school friendships just that?
The kid you used to share everything with each passing day becomes forgotten and deleted from your memory to make space for other people, because majority of these friendships fizzle after fulfilling their meant purpose as everything else in life, they are away in the sea of forgetfulness and buried under the water.
There is a study, which was conducted by Florida Atlantic University and published in Psychological Science, that says children seem to flock to friends with similar traits. And truth be told, this friend, was the other me in character and behaviour, we enjoyed each other’s company, liked what the other did and made sure we were happy at times, no matter the canes administered to us, as we were stubborn too..
It’s always a painful thing when a friendship ends, no matter what age you are at, there are immense cognitive and emotional changes that elevates the significance of friendships at heights that interconnect between friends. Your friendships means more to you at any age than they ever did before, and so if (or, more likely, when) they dissolve, it hurts.
That’s right, it hurts that the school gave me a friend and it took her away. In Primary Six she left my school for another, I remember her saying that it’s all her dad’s fault she was changing schools all the time.
Never heard from her again, I remember visiting her former home and asking around, but no one had any idea of where they had shifted too. Now she is just that primary school friend who made my 2 years more interesting and engaging than I ever thought school would be.
A mere memory with no name to it that I worry I might delete it as I create space for more fond to come memories, but will always have space in my heart.
I had a friend like this once. I think they passed on in p3. The one line that got me here was “he kid you used to share everything with each passing day becomes forgotten and deleted from your memory to make space for other people, because majority of these friendships fizzle after fulfilling their meant purpose as everything else in life, they are away in the sea of forgetfulness and buried under the water.” Sad it is.
Ohh dear at-least you know where yours is, even after getting help and find out her name (Kisakye Susan) I still can’t find her. No one know what happened to her and her family when they left.