When I was a kid, I had a friend named ‘G’. ‘G’ was the first person I met when I moved to the new city, and that was comforting because I came into school at 5th grade, when it felt like all of my classmates already knew each other. ‘G’ and I lived across the street, so we hung out a lot. I was an outcast as a kid and bullied a lot, but ‘G’ and I were best friends.

When I think back to the kind of kid I was, I’m not surprised I didn’t have many friends. I was definitely strange. Nonetheless, the few I had were precious to me. ‘G’’s parents had a troubled relationship. I don’t actually know the details, but I know that his mom was not a very good person. They became separated. Years later I would start to understand how that changed him, but when I was a kid all I saw was that one day ‘G’ didn’t want to talk to me any more… Even when I tried to talk to him, with as much emotional intelligence as a 9th grader could have, he would simply ignore me. Even our mutual friends comforted me and let me know that there was no way ‘G’ didn’t want to be friends with me, because we were so close. That was a week past the last time he and I ever talked as anything more than people who had known each other a long time ago.

As a kid, it was frustrating and confusing. It broke my heart to know I had lost someone I had been friends with for years in what felt like a flash. There was no straw that broke the camel’s back, it just happened. I remember he and I got into a fight after the transition had begun, I don’t know where the aggression had come from. Sometimes I wonder if it was him being unable to cope with the separation of his parents, but a large part of me has always felt that it was me. That somehow there was some fault with who I am as a person that lost me my best friend.

I’ve had other incredible friendships, ‘T’ being an instance of a friend who I did keep since 5th grade, and who I still regularly talk to… But sometimes I try to find ‘G’ somewhere out there and there is never anything to be found. He’s gone to Washington last time I had asked his dad, and he’s not on any social media.