I found a pair of socks that I kept from 2001. Well, I got them from an old best friend’s mother sometime around 2011, but they are one of those new year’s socks. The one with won’t clocks on them to celebrate the end of the year. They are cute, and I loved them. I still do, but they have holes in the toe from me wearing them too much. They are also a little more grey than white. No amount of bleaching will bring back the color they used to be. But I love them.

They reminded me of a time when I wasn’t happy but content. Yeah I remember that I spent a lot of time with this friend. Her parents would let me come over nearly every weekend. We celebrated almost every holiday together as well. There were actually a few times when I would go home with this friend on a Friday only to go back to my parent’s house that following Monday after school. Notice that I said home, because hers was more a home than any place that I had lived before.

It wasn’t perfect. This friend and I had fights. I occasionally disappointed her parents. And I am almost certain that 2 of her three older siblings hated me. I would say all three, but in recent years, one of them messaged me cause he wanted to date. Which was strange, but he was the hot older brother, so score (?).

This friend and I lost touch after high school. Honestly, it was bound to happen. Thinking about it now we were friends due to proximity. We had enough in common to hang out but not enough to keep the relationship from turning toxic. Back then mg disorder was not yet diagnosed and I wasn’t seeing a doctor. So I had a lot of issues that went unnoticed by many people. She had some problems as well. Some of them ok but others pretty toxic in their own right. We could have attended therapy and grown up together, but we didn’t.

I tried my hardest to stick around, but she wasn’t for it. So we stopped being friends, that is. She stopped answering my phone calls and text messages.

But I kept those socks her mother gave me. Even when I was homeless, they stayed in whatever backpack I carted around. Even when a shelter I stayed at kicked me out and refused to let me get my belongings, I still kept those damn socks.

It’s been nearly a decade since I spoke to her. What’s funny is I kept in contact with her momma for a bit after that, but she was a major republican and worshipped tr0mp. This wasn’t an issue for me, but I was pretty vocal in my distaste for him, so eventually, she unfriended me.

I still got the socks, though—those 20-year-old socks.