Friends: Birth to Adolescence
I wanted to take this opportunity to start a blog series talking about my friendships from birth to present. A lot of times our friends help to shape who we are and oftentimes (especially when we are younger) they are mirrors to our own feelings. Friend's names have changed in this article to protect anonymity.
The first in this series will focus on my friends from birth to the time I turned about 11 or 12.
I really didn't have a lot of close friends in my early years. The ones I did have they lived really close to me. The first friends that I had, I had them ever since I could remember. According to pictures and my mother, we were friends since I was three or four. Our mother's were close friends around the same age with daughters around the same age as my sister and I so it was natural that we became friends.
Sarah was the oldest and about a year older than me. She was bold, fun, and she was the one I was closer to. Laura was the youngest and about a year younger than I was. She could be whiny sometimes, upset about being left out, but I was still close to her as well. She got more fun as we got older. Our houses were two totally different streets and a little less than a mile away from each other if we took the street way. However, back then, there was a path that went behind my house and I could walk to her house in just a few minutes. My older sister and I used that path liberally. It was one of those idyllic childhood friendships that was amazing. Our families spent a lot of time together. This was almost one of the best friendships I had. We never fought, we stood up for each other. Eventually they moved to the other side of town. We still saw each other but not as much. And then they moved to Memphis, six hours away. That is pretty much the nail in the coffin for a childhood friendship. We grew apart and I haven't seen them for years. I still think fondly on the times we had as children.
My other close friend I had was Mary. Mary lived right down the street from my sister and I and we became very close. She also had a younger sister, Theresa. We lived at each other's houses. We were all pretty darn inseperable. I remember playing Sonic the Hedgehog constantly over at her house and going to her house for pool parties. This was one of the closes friends I ever had. And then I threw the friendship away in the brattiest way possible. I stupidly thought I needed friends that were the same race as I was (Mary and Theresa were white, I was black) so I started to distance myself from them. I don't think I knew I was doing that at the time but that's definitely what was happening. I regret my decision but this is one of those things that shaped me.
Stay tuned for my next series. Adolescence to young adulthood!
