Word: Renewed

Word courtesy: One of my favourite horror writers on Substack. Which feels fitting somehow, because some friendships haunt you long after they end.

The story I have with it:

For a very long time, I did not understand the concept of a “best friend.”

I grew up almost as an only child for the better part of my life, until my sister entered the scene when I was 10 years old. I never really felt the need to emotionally depend on friends. People came and went. School changed. Classes changed. Life moved on.

Then came Ankita.

She joined our school in Class 8 after changing boards, and somehow, we became inseparable almost immediately.

I was the quiet first-bencher. Teacher’s pet. Rule follower.

She was chaos.

Always laughing loudly. Always getting punished. Always standing outside the class for creating some nuisance.

And somehow, we worked perfectly.

Her house was barely ten minutes from mine, so we started walking to school together. One walk became routine. Then came after-school gossip, evening visits, sleepovers, and family familiarity. The best friend tag was then, but a natural progression.

Before we realised it, we had entered each other’s lives completely.

She taught me things nobody else could have. She was like a finishing school to me.

Suddenly, I was borrowing lip gloss, learning which lies worked on parents, understanding why confidence mattered more than marks in certain rooms, and realising boys were not mythical creatures after all.

She added personality to my painfully nerdy existence.

And maybe I grounded her a little too. Made her take her studies more seriously. Helped her focus when life distracted her.

For years, we became extensions of each other.

Our families knew our likes, dislikes, moods, and eating habits. Conversations never ended. One topic spilled into another until late nights quietly became early mornings.

Even today, I can honestly say I have never had another female friendship that intense.

And maybe that is why its ending felt like mourning.

The drift began when she started dating.

Not because she spent less time with me.

But because I could see she was making terrible decisions with terrible men.

And I kept telling her.

At first, we fought.

Then she started hiding things from me.

Then slowly we became polite versions of ourselves.

The kind of friendship where people still meet at family invitations and smile properly, but something essential has already left the room.

Then came college.

Distance made the silence easier.

Years later, she returned.

By then, life had exhausted her in exactly the ways I had once feared it would. The relationships had failed. The adventures had collapsed under their own chaos. Finally, she was ready to settle down with an NRI her parents had chosen.

And somewhere around that time, she tried rebuilding us, too.

Tried renewing the friendship.

I tried as well.

But some things in life do not renew.

Not because you hate each other.
Not because forgiveness is impossible.
But because certain versions of people only exist in certain phases of life.

And once that phase passes, no amount of effort can fully bring those two people back together again.

I still think of her fondly sometimes.

But not every bridge is meant to be rebuilt.

Some are only meant to remind you that you once crossed them.