But later there came a point where I started having real misfortune with my best friends. When I think best friends - still today - I first think of Susann. Susann and I met at University and were separated when I went to a different University in another city. We still managed to stay in contact for a very long time, years really. But maybe it had already begun ... we started to be less connected, less informed about what was going on in the other ones life. And then it broke apart when she made a cruel remark to me in a very casual way at a time when I was too weak to handle it. I know she did not mean it badly. I gave up on her for the time being, when we re-started contact, maybe a year later, I had the best hope that we could go back to what we were. Stupid! You can't go back, of course. And we were so far apart from each other by that time already that we would have needed to start anew completely. But for some unknown reason that never happened. Should I have pushed more? I guess. But I was already feeling apprehensive of what she thought of the whole affair and guilty for having been the one to give up first. Maybe one day, I'll summon some courage and simply ask her. Some people think that it is never too late. On the other side we will both have changed tremendously in the last years (yes, that rip in our friendship is now already 7 or 8 years in the past) - we may have developed into such completely different directions that maybe we can't build it up again. I think that is the reason why I haven't pushed it ... I'm simply afraid to learn that it is already too late. To this day I count her amongst my best friends ... even though I don't even know her anymore.
The last years I had trouble finding any best friend material. When I finally connected with somebody it was a revelation. I met Ingrid maybe 5-6 years ago the first time at a barbecue party. Before that I had heard of her from friends, that she was living only a few houses away from me and had a boy roughly the same age as my twins. On that party we were sitting a bit apart from each other and I summoned all my courage (I felt so awkward being at a party where I knew hardly anyone apart from the hosts) and asked her if that was true. But at the exact same time someone else spoke to her and she never heard me. I felt slightly embarrassed. We did not meet again until one-and-a-half years later, when my son, one of the twins, changed into the same kindergarten group as her son and they became best friends (forming the famous mice-triumvirate with a third boy, they were a picture to behold in these days, three boys all of them with long or at least longer blond hair and up to no good). So when we met again I remembered that embarrassing first trial for contact I had started years ago and I held back. Despite holding back (or maybe because?) something grew between us and I can say that on my side it grew to almost a bit more than just friendship. I'm not sure if Ingrid would ever have called me her best friend, but in the last three years I know that she was mine. She died 5th of December 2009 at the age of 43, leaving behind a husband, two children and a woman who regretted to not have pushed that friendship more.
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