R.I.P friendship

What happens to dead friendships? 

I don't think it's as simple as two people no longer being in each other's lives. There was a connection. And that doesn't just disappear into ether. It doesn't matter that either of you think it's gone or destroyed by time and distance. It's still there. A strand as thin as DNA made up with individual strands of memories that you cannot forget. 

If I close my eyes, I am fourteen again. Swimming in the pool on a hot summer day. Playing Marco Polo. Or on the phone talking for hours to another friend who makes all the right sympathetic noises I need to hear. Or laughing at the local bakery with another friend drinking some coffee. 

I guess what I'm saying is I'm grieving. These people aren't dead. They've moved away, moved on. It isn't the same even if I was to reconnect with them. I know that. I want the friend of the past, I guess.  I'm still not over the loss of my old friends. I'm sure they have moved on with their lives. But I spend most of my time in my head, so I really can't do the same. 

I've been alone most of my life. It shaped me to be the introvert I am today. I know that alone and lonely aren't the same thing. Most days, I don't have them both over for tea. But sometimes, they make a date with me and I'm forced to sit through the ordeal of their idle chit chat, ready for the meal to end. 

As I get older, I become more and more wary of meeting new people. It gives me anxiety to share my story again. To open myself up when there are just so many locks to unlock just to open the gate. 

I think we don't know how important it is to belong. It's an inherent need in all of us. I think it's dangerous to exclude other people. The repercussions of being unkind like that will ripple into the future. 

"Wanna be friends?"  Why was it so easy to ask that as a child?  

And why does it make us feel so vulnerable to ask it now?  I am starting to forget how to make friends. I think most adults have. It isn't enough to be in a room with people who share your hobbies. 

Did "growing up" mean we learned to judge others?

Or maybe it's not that we judge others, but we judge ourselves as unworthy? Maybe we think it's better to be alone. That it's not worth the risk of getting hurt. 

Or maybe that's just me.