Why do we not miss our old friends? ( I guess we do a little)

 

Why do we not miss our old friends?

Today I was sitting in my room alone and suddenly I remembered about my childhood school days when I was in kindergarten and junior school. It also reminded me of two other kids, one was a girl and the other was boy and as far as my memory can tell, these guys were my first friends and they were the only best friends I have ever had in my life. Surely I have made friends throughout my life but these two guys that I was friends with when I was like 8 years old were something special.

I don't remember them clearly and I don't remember exactly how we met what we did as little kids but all what I do remember is this feeling of affection I have for them and the fun I had with them. I think the innocence of being a child plays a big part in it as well because kids do not have any alien feelings in them. They do not try to impress, they do not try to be forceful, they do not try to be someone they are not, they do not try to be fake. We have the purest friendship when we are kids and that bond we build in this very early part of our lives is very special and cannot be replaced.

The most eye opening part is I have not seen them in 16 Years! But I remember being with them like it was yesterday. As a kid I never realized but now when I think about them, I realize that they were very important to me and obviously an 8 year old child will not understand the feeling of importance and friendship. I don't even think we were sad on the last day of school and I believe we just said each other a normal goodbye just how we did everyday because obviously we didn't know back then that we will never even see each other ever again. It was 2005 or 2006 and I was in class 2.

Then in 2006 I moved to different school for my class 3 and I spent the next 9-10 years in that school. That is basically a majority of my life at that school. Met a bunch of new people and made new friends throughout the years and got super busy with studies and the pressure of exams and I think somewhere in the rather early years of my new school life, I forgot about my first friends. I think it happens with every human. My brain treated my literal childhood memories as 'trash' and sent it to the dark depths of subconscious from where it would be extremely difficult to extract them because I was not thinking about them anymore and they were not relevant to my life anymore. Occasionally, I did think about them rather briefly for a few minutes once or twice a year but I think even that stopped in my late teen to adult years. Whenever I though about my school, I never really though about my old best friends anymore and the memories I had of them started fading really sharply.

At the time of writing, Its August 2021 and I was just there on my bed staring at the ceiling and then I just remembered them. These two little guys that were very important to me but now are probably as close as dead to me at this moment. All those memories just came back flashing in but sadly, those memories are barely visible. Those memories are corrupted because I barely remember them. But what I do remember is the feeling that I had when I was with them. Thinking about them again made me feel free and liberated in a way I never thought I would feel. I wanted to try and find them somehow and reconnect but then my heart kind of stopped a little when the realization hit me, I DO NOT REMEMBER THEIR NAMES ANYMORE!! But I was not surprised by this revelation at all. When you have not seen a person in 16 years and last time you met them, you and them were like 8 years old, the chances of them remembering your name and you remembering their name is very unlikely. I did remember their names at least a couple years ago but now it is all erased from my conscious. I do roughly remember how they looked though. It is a bit blurry but I kind of do remember their looks. Unfortunately my mission to find them failed before it even began. I have no data about them and I do not know where.

Sometimes I wonder if they have ever thought of me the way I have thought of them in some point in their lives. Do they even remember me? Do they even remember how much innocent we were together and how much we loved each other's company? Do they even feel the bond we share the same way as I do?.....Well I doubt they feel any of that. I mean I have not felt anything for them in years until now so why should they be obliged to feel anything about me or even remember me for the matter of the fact. I do not care if they barely remember me because I would still love to reconnect regardless even if the meeting ends up being an awkward disaster or them pretending to be strangers.

Which brings me to the original question? Do I miss them? Well not really its just that I got quite a bit nostalgic and emotional thinking about them....Argghh yeah maybe I miss them a tiny little bit but really I have not at all missed them in the last 16 years at all because obviously I have people in my life to fill that gap and they are no longer relevant in my life and are no longer important even if at one point they were both relevant and important. But in any case, I still have this desire to reconnect with them because they were once someone I really cared about. I just do not know how or where to start.