Someone once told me that the friendships we make in school are the only real ones. That after college, after work begins, everyone else is just competing with you. For the first three decades of my life, I believed that was true.
It has been almost ten years since we stopped being friends, and only now do I understand that perhaps we were never as close as I thought.
Someone in my family became very ill. I had just left my job and moved back home to be with them. Around that time, Margareth—who always saw herself as the glue holding the group together—kept pressuring me to set a date for our Christmas reunion. I couldn’t. Every bit of my energy was devoted to my family. She took it badly, and that was the last time I was invited to anything.
Most of us had known each other since we were little girls. Evelyn and I were always in the same classroom until she left school. Even after she moved to the U.S., we stayed in touch—until we didn’t.
MJ was, to me, the spark of the group. She was funny and fearless, unafraid to speak her mind. I only saw her twice after that failed Christmas reunion. She was always closest to Margareth.
K never seemed to care much about me, but I loved her gentle nature. I haven’t received a message from her or seen her since.
These were the friendships I believed I had carried with me since childhood.
I invited them to my house countless times; my parents welcomed them warmly. They never refused—until we were in college and Margareth’s mother finally got cable TV. That’s when she said to me, “Why would I go to your place? I already have cable.” Even then, I didn’t stop caring.
When her boyfriend broke up with her, I met her mother and planned a surprise party to lift her spirits. When she went back to him and he later tried to assault her, I was there. Always.
Now that we are almost forty, I see what I couldn’t—or wouldn’t—see before. The signs were always there. Margareth was a bully. When we were twelve, she mocked a new student for the hair on her face until the girl changed schools. She made cruel comments about Kathy, who was the quiet one. Kathy and Gris were the only ones who stayed in touch with me, the only ones who had my back when I truly needed it.
I miss them all. But I carry guilt for not standing up sooner—for not confronting the bully when she hurt Kathy or Gris.
I will never know why they stopped talking to me. Maybe, as Margareth once said, they already had their own homes and no longer needed me.
This is the last Christmas I think of them this way.
To the women I thought were my friends: friendship is proven in moments of care, and you were not there.
