personal narrative 1

Where Did He Go?

Throughout most of high school I had two best friends. One of them (Jonathan) had been my best friend since kindergarten and remains my best friend to this day. The other one (Richard) I met in seventh grade and he joined our group of friends instantly. By the time we got to high school the three of us were together as much as possible, and to do anything without one of us was weird and wrong. We had a large group of friends, but that wasn’t really important as long as we could still see each other.

Fast forward to the second semester of our junior year; the three of us were in a class together for the first time ever. Early during the semester Richard stopped showing up to class and we wanted to find out what was going on, so we asked around to see if anyone had seen him and found out that he hadn’t been going to any classes. Not only that, but we couldn’t get ahold of him; he had always been bad with his cell phone anyway. Then one day at lunch we saw him, more than a month since the last time that we talked to him. We asked him how he had been and what he had been doing; he responded with something to the effect of, “You know, I’ve been around, just doing stuff.” He was always very private, and often what he told us was voluntary, not through our persuasion; nonetheless, we asked some more questions without gaining any ground before we decided to stop. He attended class with a little more frequency for the rest of the semester, and we slowly started to hear stories about what he was doing during his time off. He had gotten involved with marijuana and alcohol, which consumed his life for a short period of time, and became a way for him to escape his parents. He hasn’t since become as dependent on alcohol as he was, and he quit smoking marijuana, but our relationship never quite returned to normal. We still hung out occasionally through our senior year and once or twice over the summer, but we grew apart very quickly. I once could say that he was one of two best friends in every way, and now our relationship is more like an acquaintance. Other than my best friend now (and then) I have never been closer to anyone in my life; it is a loss in my life that I never would have wanted.