By Claire Burianek
Abigail laid down on her bed and sighed deeply. It had been a long day at work, and she was exhausted. As she closed her eyes to drift off to sleep, her phone pinged from her nightstand. She fumbled for it and opened a text from her best friend Taylor: a picture they had both taken together on their first day of high school when they were just 15. She was swept with an instant wave of nostalgia and remembered that year of her life in vivid detail.
She and Taylor didn’t have many friends besides each other, but that didn’t matter much to them, as they were too busy laughing at the other girls who thought they were too cool to hang out with them. They didn’t need any other friends to be satisfied. They both had ambitions bigger than their classmates did, and she recalled now how they had come to fruition. Taylor became a singer, just as she always dreamed, and Abigail had found a love deeper than she had ever thought possible with her now-fiancé.
Before they met, she had recently experienced a divorce from the man she thought she’d be spending the rest of her life with. Her heartache was fortunately cut short when she met a better man that would never leave her side. Now they were engaged, and she was swept up in a whirlwind of planning her fairytale wedding.
She also remembered the tragedies of being 15; more specifically, dedicating all her time and attention to a boy who, as it turned out, didn’t care much about her at all. She wanted love so badly back then that Abigail was ready to commit to a serious relationship with a boy she hardly knew.
He was on the football team, and she had always wanted to know him better, but the longer their relationship lasted the less he wanted to do with her. It took her a while, but she had finally recognized her true worth and left him behind.
She mused to herself, all’s well that ends well, for she and Taylor remained best friends to this day and had accomplished everything they wanted to. As she drifted off to sleep, she thought that if her 15-year-old self could see her now, she would be astounded by all that she had accomplished.