I think the last time that all five of us were all together must have been the day we graduated high school. It was before Tori moved out of the dorms to go home to Iowa for the summer, before I started working full-time, before Caroline headed out to Minnesota and then to DC—the first of us to go on to college, of course, because she’s gonna be the best field hockey goalie American University has ever seen. Then we all followed suit. We packed up our lives into boxes and cars, and we found ourselves in entirely new cities full of entirely new people. And the last time all five of us were all together was in May. (I did the math; that’s six months ago.) It’s so crazy to think that it’s actually been six months since the whole group has been with one another, especially when you think about how we used to see each other nearly every day.
Something I didn’t expect to learn in these past six months, and the past three months especially, is that building friendships takes a lot of time. I’d completely forgotten—I mean, I’d known you all for four years. You guys made it so easy to forget that friendships take so much effort. With all of you, I was never lacking in opportunities to laugh, shoulders to sob into, and unconditional love and forgiveness. And so much of what goes into friendship is being able to share experiences and memories with each other and being able to look back on those together.
I also realized that the bonds you build with people in high school are never going to be similar to the ones you build in college, which I think comes from the fact that your starting points when you meet people are entirely different. At least in the ways I’ve experienced it, high school is sort of a time where you start to really discover who you are and what you believe in, and college still has a little bit of that, but it feels like it becomes more of a place where you get to start expanding on the passions and beliefs that you’ve developed in high school. And, while I’ve been developing, I’ve been caught off guard more than enough times with how often an idea would completely rock my world. I had no idea that six months could hold so many stories, and so many changes.
The thing that’s never changed, though, is how thankful I am to have had each of you in my life. Even with how much I’m sure all of us have changed since high school, although that wasn’t really that long ago, and even though we haven’t seen each other in what feels like forever, how much I love each of you hasn’t shaken for a minute. You were the ones who were with me when I started to discover myself—which put you through my phases of terrible poetry, a couple of really bad outfits freshman year, and a lot of support while I learned how to pull myself out of holes I’d fallen into. We watched each other change and grow throughout all of high school, and I honestly can’t remember feeling prouder of anyone the way I felt the day we graduated. Not because of the fact that we graduated—like Mr. Jones always said, getting past high school wasn’t going to impress anyone—but because of who we had become as people and how strong and ready for the future we felt that day. Going into Thanksgiving break, even though not all of us were going to get to be in town this week, I was almost nervous to see everyone again. It’s sort of tougher to tell stories when nobody else has met the people starring in them, and I could feel myself getting tongue-tied before we even started sharing those stories. I wondered if we’d all even still be able to relate to each other as well as we all used to.
But of course, like in most situations, there was absolutely nothing to be anxious about. When we finally did get together, it didn’t even feel like we’d missed a beat. It felt like we hadn’t seen each other in ages, but at the same time like the last time we were together was just yesterday.
And, especially since this is Thanksgiving break anyway, I want to close this off with a really, really huge thank you. For all of the love and the memories and the late nights and the bubble teas and the memories for the past four years, and for the much much needed reminder that it doesn’t matter how long it’s been since you’ve seen each other—with best friends, no amount of distance or time is enough to corrode the bonds you’ve made.
Image Credit: Annmarie Morrison