Playground Beginnings

We met on our elementary school playground. I was sitting alone on a bench during recess—probably pretending not to care. Her best friend wasn’t at school that day, so she walked over and asked, “Wanna swing with me?” That was it. No dramatic music. No movie moment. Just two girls on the swings. And we were inseparable from that point on.

The Kind of Friendship That Feels Like Family

Jamie practically lived at my house after that. Even though she moved constantly—always renting, always packing up again with her mom, stepdad, and siblings—we always found our way back to each other. My family would drive hours just to pick her up for a weekend. Because she was family.

We wrote stories together. Invented whole worlds. Made up jokes so layered only we understood them. She knew me in a way no one else ever would. She saw the early drafts of me—the raw, unfiltered, still-learning version. And I saw hers.

She knows where the skeletons are buried. Hell, she helped me dig the graves.

The Future That Never Happened

There was a time I thought we’d be each other’s maids of honor. That we’d raise babies together. That one day, we’d sit on a porch, sipping coffee and laughing about the chaos we survived. But that porch never got built.

The Spiral

Jamie fell into a storm. Toxic relationship. Addiction. Let’s call her partner Jackie—Jackie was the flood, and Jamie couldn’t find her way out.

I stayed too long. I made excuses. I tried to fix her because I thought she wanted to be saved. But people aren’t spells—you can’t resurrect them with enough love and loyalty. She stopped showing up as herself long before she stopped showing up at all.

The Ghost Visits

Now, she drifts in every few months—usually when she needs something. Usually money. She’s a stranger wearing the face of someone I once loved like a sister. I want to tell her to go, to finally rest in peace. But I have what I call a Jamie Sense—I feel when she’s coming. Like a cold breeze before a knock at the door.

It sucks. Because part of me still lights up when I hear from her. Still hopes this time it’ll be real. Still craves the comfort of being known so deeply by someone who helped shape me. But that part of her—the real Jamie? She’s long gone.

The Kind of Grief That Has No Funeral

Friendship breakups are a special kind of grief. There’s no funeral. No closure. Just silence, broken only when ghosts come knocking.

So I light a candle for Jamie—not in mourning, not in hope, just as a soft spell of release. A whispered goodbye to a sister I loved, and the stranger she became.