Epea Pteroenta

Friendship is not like romance. It is actually meant to last forever. Only all too often it doesn't.

Best Friends Forever

I've never been the social butterfly type, who makes friends within a couple of days of finding herself in a new setting, which means I've only had a handful of real friends in my life. Entirely my doing, of course, since I'm picky about who I consider a friend. Spending long periods of time sharing living or working space is not enough. Not if there's no actual communication beyond the contact, or sharing of appreciations.

Since I moved across the continent, naturally I lost touch with almost all my Greek friends and acquaintances. The internet is the only way I have to keep in touch now, and most are not particularly computer-literate. Some of those who really matter, though, are – I'm looking at you, Chris and Raven, and I love you both, guys.

Still, I've had my share of lost friendships even before circumstances made it mandatory. Few of my primary school friends went to the same secondary I did, and it's very hard to keep in touch with someone when you're 12 and school devours most of the day. The same happened when we graduated and moved to university. Some went to other cities, others stayed in Athens, but it's a big sprawling city with long commutes and university hours are even longer than school ones. And being the picky kind I am, in university itself, I gravitated towards people who had come in from other places and went back home after graduation, leaving me again with the thankless task of maintaining a long-distance friendship. It's harder and less rewarding than a long-distance relationship, and didn't last long.

There was only one friend that I lost without quite realising why. We never moved quite in the same circles. Her name was Evie and we lived in the same apartment building – four floors apart – where I grew up (between the ages of 4 and 16). She was six months older, one year ahead of me in school, and much richer and more cultured; her father was the engineer who had designed the building. We didn't go to the same school, and even though we learned English in the same institute, we usually ended up in different classes because our schools had different schedules. We just hung out together, in her room or mine, first playing, then talking and listening to music. Sometimes we went out riding our bikes, or saw the odd movie at the cinema her father partly owned. One summer, when I was 13 and my parents had to go back to their village to vote, I stayed with her family for a few days. She never missed my birthday parties, nor I hers. I was convinced we'd grow old together, sharing stories about work and kids the way we bitched about school.

As it turned out, forever was much shorter. After we moved, just three streets away, the visit exchange started to grow more irregular. A couple of years later, after my father's death, it had stopped altogether. We both were very busy in the transition from high school to university, but I can't help feeling that neither of us put too much effort into keeping our friendship alive. I don't even remember when the last time we saw each other was. My last visit to their home was sometime in our mid-20s, when her father died, and she wasn't even there at the time. My mother sees hers sometimes, but I'm not sure if I would recognise my erstwhile best friend in the street now.

It doesn't hurt, like it does when you 'are over' with someone over a fight, but I still miss my best friend, regardless.