a talk of dreams

this morning, i awoke to realizing my dreams. there are two girls i have thought of recently, *alexa and *june. they are high school friends that i have fallen out of touch with, and yet, i wonder how they're doing, more often than they would think.

alexa was the coolest girl in 6th grade. and i was her friend. but i wasn't cool or popular by anyone's standards. i didn't care. through grade school and high school, we remained friends, not always close, but never fighting, either. she was that girl who i, by morals, may have been considered "better" than, but by my standards, we were equals. she smoke, she drank, she stayed out late to be with the boys, and yet she had an innocence about her, something i couldn't explain. i wrote her poetry, she loved me for it. one night, she told me we could get some gin and drink, just the two of us. i declined, but i wondered what she was doing asking a dumb girl like me to drink, how much fun could i possibly be? we talked through out high school, i always wondered just how well she was doing.

june was a girl i had always known through out high school, but had never gotten close to. when i had just broken up with my boyfriend, beginning of our senior year, she did someone no one else had done: showed me compassion and extended the hand of friendship. i would cry, she would bring me toilet paper. once, i cried on her knee, it left mascara, and it became a moment we would never forget. we were best friends for about a year and a half, inseparable, crazy, and fun. i was content for it to stay this way. middle of our senior year, she fell in love. two, maybe three months later, she was engaged to him. needless to say, people were skeptical and couldn't figure out why anyone in their right mind would get engaged in high school. i knew the guy, and i knew she could do better. i encouraged her to do just that. love, when had, is the most blinding thing a person can experience. she wouldn't hear me, and i was, um, replaced. but i, too, was at fault. i let it go. i didn't try to keep the friend i had been close to for a year and a half. towards the end our senior year, we were nearly strangers, and i couldn't be the crazy girl with her that i once had been.

i have been thinking about these two girls. they have helped make me who i am today, as strange as i may be. it is a year and two months since we graduated. alexa is living in a nearby town and just had a baby. june lives two and a half hours away, working very hard to pay for rent, i'm sure. i have found out little bits and pieces of their lives over the past year, some good, some bad. i just wonder if they ever think of me the way i have reminisced here. it's hard to rebuild that which has been burnt....i can only say that i hope they are happy with who they are and what they've done with their lives. i mean that in the sincerest manner possible. i won't forget them.

*names have been changed to protect the innocent.