Low-lit campfire struggling to stay alive: Childhood friendships

I went to this reunion today, it was a 7 grade class reunion that someone I thought hated me invited me to. I was if course very happy for this, it'd be like the first time in 6 years that I saw all of my childhood friends in a room together so I just didn't think it twice.

I don't know what I was expecting but seeing them all grown up wasn't what I was expecting at all and I'm not talking physically more like spiritually and personality wise yk? So when I saw them, they looked all taller, stronger, tired and somehow hollow and it made me realize some things.

1.We grew up into people we were afraid of back then. 

I remember us playing on the field just running around gossiping laughing and crying and feeling understood and supported but I saw who once was my best friend in the world drink the awkwardness away like it was nothing. I think we are irrevocably changed to the point of not recognizing the sweet child that once habituated inside of us because we felt like we needed to. 

2.It felt like a low lit campfire that has been fighting against the wind for a while now. 

I was not a saint of course, as soon as they passing drinks I just felt like f4ck it and I ended up sitting in the entrance stairs to my ex friend's house. The house I used to hang out almost every weekend and play with different stupid little toys or watch animatics and cartoons next to my friend. I glanced at the owner of the house and they were passed out in the couch we used play pretend. 

And one of my closest friend ended that night by saying "That is our crime, we forgot the children inside of us and exchanged them for burnout versions that waste their lives away in cheap booze and cigarettes." I'm wasted and I might be exaggerating and she might be a melancholic philosophical drunk but those words made me want to hide under my bed and cry. 

There is no point of me saying that I love them like the child that loved them those years ago. They'll forget me and I'll forget their voices by living off the idea of their old voices that were sweet and filled with joy. 

It is just so crazy to me that the people I used to nerd out and watch fnaf animations look so miserable and I am somehow feel guilt of not being there for them as if it would have stopped us from growing up anyway.

Anyway gn might rant about shit later:)