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Thursday, June 3 2021

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com MICHIGAN IN COLOR

There we sat in her childhood 

bedroom. Except it was no longer 
purple like mine. In fact, it felt like her 
entire house changed. New pictures 
on the walls, new appliances in her 
kitchen. I felt like a stranger in the 
house I grew up going to every day. 

You never realize you start to drift 

away from someone you love until 
you reconnect and rekindle the old 
flame. This feeling hit me recently as I 
started seeing my best friend from my 
childhood more often this past week. 

We’d been best friends since fourth 

grade. Every day we would ring each 
other’s doorbells to ask if we could 
play outside, sleepover at each other’s 
houses every weekend, sit next to each 
other on the school bus every morning, 
go on walks together every day, gush 
over cute boys in our classes, paint each 
other’s nails, anything and everything 
you would think a pair of best friends 
would do. We’re going to be best 
friends forever. It felt like I had found 
my person. Imagine lighting a match 
and immediately seeing the flame 
appear, how bright that flame shines 
— that’s how the friendship felt. Bright 
and exciting.

High school came around, and 

suddenly we were no longer at each 
other’s houses every day. We weren’t 
texting each other everyday, playing 
outside, going on walks, talking about 
our crushes, painting each other’s nails. 
There wasn’t any of that anymore. 
We were still friends, don’t get me 
wrong, but the flame was starting to 
burn out right in front of us. Looking 
back, I never knew what triggered the 
flame to start dwindling. Some days 
I think to myself that maybe it was 
because we both got busy with school, 
applying to college, clubs and other 
extracurricular activities. Plus, she was 
a year older than me, so there was no 
way we’d even be in the same classes. 
Other days I think it was because we 
met new people. Again, both of us 
were in different grades and made 
friends in our own classes. We wanted 
to strengthen our relationships with 
other people since ours had always 
been solid. Not knowing, for me, is the 
worst part. Why did the flame start 
to die out? It’s almost impossible to 
pinpoint when and why exactly things 
started drifting apart. 

Then we both got to college. I 

moved to Ann Arbor, and she moved 
to Mount Pleasant. We rarely texted 
each other, rarely were home on the 
same weekends. She just turned into 
someone I followed on Instagram, 
someone who would slide up on my 

Snapchat stories. The flame was on its 
last legs. Again, we both were college 
students living in different cities, and 
we needed time for our work and our 
extracurriculars. We also needed time 
to strengthen the relationships we 
were creating in our new homes. Still, 
I was hopeful the flame would persist.

But the match completely burned 

out. The flame was dead. 

I kept telling myself that we were 

on good terms, we were just busy. 
I was making excuses to myself 
that everything was fine with our 
friendship when in reality we were 
turning into strangers right before our 
eyes. The reality of it didn’t hit me until 
all of a sudden she was in a relationship, 
and I found out through Instagram. 
Don’t get me wrong, I was happy for 
her, but I felt like that was something 
you would tell your friend in person 
instead of finding out by watching an 
Instagram story. I couldn’t be mad at 
her though because I caught myself 
doing the same thing. I started trying 
new things, meeting new people and 
immediately showed the world on 
social media. I didn’t text her anything 
about what was happening in my life 
and she didn’t text me anything about 
what was going on with her. We met 
new people, made new inside jokes 
with them, went on trips without each 
other and listened to different music. 

We weren’t the ones in each other’s 
houses every weekend anymore. 

The flame stayed dead. The most 

contact we had with each other was via 
social media, just viewing each other’s 
pictures, stalking the new friends 
we’re tagging, occasionally sliding 
up on each other’s stories. It wasn’t 
until the pandemic hit that we started 
talking to each other again. Out of the 
blue, she invited me to spend the night 
at her house, just like old times. I was 
hesitant, of course. I didn’t know what 
to think of it. But we both had tested 
negative for COVID and were both 
free that weekend. Plus, we were still 
each other friends, albeit, or at least 
acquaintances. I decided to go, and 
immediately I felt out of place. Her 
house looked completely different, so 
unlike the home I spent every weekend 
at in fourth grade. But the night 
progressed, and I slowly started feeling 
comfortable again. The hours kept 
passing by, and we started opening up. 
We started with the shallow stuff: “I 
tried a new restaurant!” “I went to my 
first college football game!” And then 
it all vomited out of us. Everything we 
hadn’t told each other came spewing 
out of each of us. By the end of it all, 
we were in tears. She looked at me and 
said “Smarani, I thought you hated 
me.” I started sobbing even more. How 
could I hate you? If only you knew the 

number of nights I’ve stayed up tossing 
and turning, wondering what went 
wrong, and why I couldn’t manage 
to keep the flame. The number of 
sleepless nights I’ve spent silently 
shedding tears because I missed my 
best friend. The only words I managed 
to get out were “I thought you hated 
me.” We embraced each other, our 
tears staining each other’s shirts. I 
was able to get a good night’s sleep that 
night. 

It’s impossible to relight a match 

that has been burned out. In the same 
way it’s impossible to ever go back to 
the stage of friendship we were once 
at. We had drifted so far apart that 
at this rate, who knows how long it 
would be until we were back. The fact 
that we’re getting older doesn’t help 
either. She’s getting ready to relocate 
for an internship. I’m working on my 
passion projects and taking classes 
over the summer. It’s a hard pill to 
swallow. But we’re both ready to try 
and take the baby steps necessary to 
get as close as we can to where we once 
were. Although we’ve grown up to be 
different now, we both want to go back 
to how it once was. Back to talking 
about our crushes again, taking trips 
together, sharing our music and going 
back to spending every weekend at 
each other’s houses.

Rekindling an Old Flame

SMARANI KOMANDURI

MiC Columnist

Design by Madison Grosvenor

