On May 1st of senior year we walked through the halls of our high school looking at everyone’s new shirts to see where it is they are officially attending college in the fall. As I saw my friends repping a different college than me, I quite honestly didn’t get too phased. I knew we were separating from each other in 4 short months, but I didn’t understand how difficult that would actually be.
Older friends and siblings told me that sooner or later my high school friends will fade away and my new college friends will replace them. I didn’t let that get to my head because I knew my high school friends would be in my life forever. I wanted nothing but to prove them wrong.
The goodbyes were not easy and the tears flew strong as more and more friends starting to leave for school in August. I didn’t know just how hard it would be to let go of my friends and send them off, just hoping they wouldn’t find anybody to replace me. These are the friends I have had for 18 years, and I didn’t want anybody else to take them away from me. I didn’t want to let them go.
However, I had to make my own journey as well, and hopefully find a good crew of friends just like the ones at home. The first week of school my new roommate and I went door to door embarrassing ourselves and trying to make new friends. I could already tell day 1 that my roomie who was basically my twin, was going to be my friend life long. But… we needed to make some other friends. Now we all have that group of friends the first semester of college you think are going to be the new crew, but it takes some time to shortly figure out that you really don’t like any of them.
Sophomore year is the year I knew the friends I made in college were the real ones.
Going home for breaks or just a short weekend I would talk to my “home friends” about my “college friends” and they really had no interest hearing about it. Confused at first, but then the roles were reversed and I found myself not listening to stories about their new friends. It didn’t take long to realize that even I was thinking that they were replacing me with new friends. And trust me, I know we all had that thought.
It takes time to realize however, you aren’t being replaced. If you were being replaced you wouldn’t be in their life anymore.
May comes around and you find yourself having mixed emotions; sad about leaving your school friends, but ecstatic about reuniting with your friends from home. The similar mixed emotions come back in August when summer comes to an end and it is time to reunite with your school friends.
Your home friends are the ones who know the baby stories, the crush you had in 3rd grade, the awkward stages in middle school and of course the drama in high school.
Your school friends are the ones you now live with who know the stress you go through with school work, the crazy party stories from the weekend and the bad living habits you have.
But that doesn’t mean your high school friends are going to fade away and be replaced by your college friends. So if someone says that to you, find a way to prove them wrong because I love my high school homies and I will never forget about you!
Except the ones I wanna forget, I left you peeps back in high school.