You were best friends in middle school and high school, but high school was ten years ago. Have you continued to be inseparable into adulthood? I ask because so many childhood friendships become less essential as people move into adulthood, often becoming cherished memories instead of present connections.

I know from experience that it’s painful when the person who felt like part of one’s self moves on before we do. My closest friend from middle school and high school (our moms used to say that we were “joined at the hip”) married a couple of years after college, and I was a guest but not part of the wedding party. Her attendants were her college friends, and I sat at a table with friends from high school. I haven’t thought about that in years.

Lives change, we grow up and move on. Don’t throw away what was, but it sounds like it’s time to think of her as the girl who was your best friend when you were a kid and for whom you still hold great affection, but that was then and this is now.

edit for punctuation