I used to hate Halloween, and I had a very good reason.

The story starts in the eighth grade. A couple of days before Halloween I asked one of my close friends if she wanted to go trick-or-treating with me, and initially she said yes. I was so excited! We had only been trick-or-treating together once before and I remembered that Halloween as my favorite. On Halloween day, my friend came up to me and told me sorry, but she couldn’t go with me that evening because something had come up. I was sad, but I figured that something was important and did not press the issue. Later that evening I was sitting outside with our neighbors trying to figure out if I was going to go trick-or-treating with my sister, when I saw her down the street trick-or-treating with another girl from school. To say the least, I was devastated. This was my first experience with being ditched and it felt awful. There was a sinking feeling in my stomach and I immediately worried about my image. Why wasn’t I good enough to go trick-or-treating with her? Even now, seven years later, I still feel my anxiety level increase when I think back on this moment.

Now, here is the part in the story where most pessimistic people would tell you that they stopped talking to that friend because you should not keep negative people in your life. I am not going to tell you that, because I did not get rid of this friend. Humans are not perfect and even as an eighth grader I realized this tough truth. I did not know why she would ditch me when we were friends, but I tried to not dwell on this fact too much. We were friends and I have made mistakes before; I think everyone does. The best we can do is ask for forgiveness and move on. If we broke off a friendship every time we did something wrong, we would not have any friends left. I learned that friendship needs to be stronger than petty disagreements.

My friendship was stronger than this small snub. In fact, this friendship is stronger than several mistakes, because that was not the only bump we navigated. We are still good friends today and I consider myself lucky to have her in my life.

So, why did I used to hate Halloween? I used to hate it because it was a reminder every year that friendships are messy and I did not want to have messy friendships. I wanted friendship to be easy. I have come to accept the imperfection in friendship and I don’t mind it so much, because it is a reminder that we are human.