Before going to college, there are three main factors people warn you about: the workload, the roommate situation and the dining hall food. What often gets left out of the conversation are the bonds you leave behind. Hometown friendships can easily get lost in the chaos of college life, a transition that is frequently overlooked. That adjustment can be its own challenge entirely, and it is okay if it has been harder than you expected.
During my first semester of college, I held on tightly to changing friendships. I texted my friends constantly, checking in and sending TikToks as if nothing had changed. I kept telling myself that that is what you do when you care about people: You put in the effort.
However, I soon realized I was the only one putting in that effort. The responses grew slower, and conversations started to feel like obligations. I would send a message, receive a “haha yeah” and then hear radio silence for two weeks. If you have experienced that, you know the feeling. It is not just rejection; it feels like speaking into an empty room.
During my second semester, I made a decision that was uncomfortable and felt wrong at the time. I stopped reaching out.
At first, I did it to see who would notice if I was no longer the one initiating every conversation. Inevitably, no one did. Instead of continuing to wait for them to show interest, I started to rethink why I was pulling back in the first place. I realized that each time I reached out and got no response, I felt worse than I had before sending the message. At some point, I had to be honest with myself and ask a difficult question: “Why do I keep doing something that consistently makes me feel bad?”
When I stopped reaching out, I gradually became happier. The mental energy I had been spending on managing one-sided friendships opened up. I started to invest in the people around me at school, instead of spending Friday nights hoping someone from home would text first.
This shift did not mean I stopped caring. I simply stopped tying my happiness to people who were no longer making me a priority.
The hardest thing I had to learn was that missing someone and holding onto something that is already gone are two completely different things. You are allowed to miss your hometown friends, and the version of life where everything felt familiar and you did not have to work so hard to feel known. However, there is a difference between missing a person and clinging to a dynamic that no longer exists. If you are putting in all the effort and constantly feeling like it is not enough, the problem is usually not that you are not trying hard enough. Sometimes, the hardest truth is that a friendship has changed, and no amount of effort can force it back into what it used to be.
It is important to remember that the phone works both ways. This is not about assigning blame, but it is something worth acknowledging. If someone wants to be in your life, they have the same ability to reach out that you do. The silence speaks volumes. It tells you something about where that relationship stands in the present. You do not have to be unkind about it, but you also should not overlook the message that their actions are sending.
Growing apart from people is not a failure. It does not mean that those friendships were not real or that they did not matter. People change dramatically during the transition from teenage years to adulthood, and you change too. Sometimes you grow alongside each other, and other times you grow in different directions, but neither outcome is within your control.
What you can control is where you direct your energy.
Some of those friendships may find their way back into your life when you are both in a different place. Some will not, and that is okay too. If they do return, they may look different from what they once did. Regardless, you do not have to keep knocking on a door that no longer opens simply because it used to.
The friendships worth keeping are the ones where both people show up. Hold out for those and invest in them.