Friendships in your teens are a different kind of magic. They turn random school corridors into sacred spaces and lunch breaks into full-on confession sessions. They’re intense. The kind of all-consuming intensity that feels both like a thunderstorm and a warm hug, the kind of intense that makes you think “this is forever” until they forget to wish you happy birthday at 12 a.m. You make endless promises about doing things when you grow up but fast forward a few years and you’re packing your bags for college, texting each other “let’s catch up” from cities that are miles apart making you wonder how you used to talk for hours about nothing.
But growing up has a way of softening that intensity.
Teen friendships don’t begin with soul searching, they spark from shared suffering. Over bad cafeteria food, hatred for math, suffering from acne and sharing skincare routines or because you got thrown in a group for a science project. Somewhere between passing notes in class, sending each other the most brainrotted reels or breaking into impromptu Bollywood dance numbers, these people quietly become your chosen family. You know each other’s secrets, the bizarre code names they’ve given to the people they dislike, their irrational fears and the number of times they’ve faked an injury to avoid PE.Â
But at some point, paths begin to split and we don’t even realise it. Personalities change. Priorities change. One becomes a letterboxd cinephile quoting long forgotten french movie released in 1934, another becomes an english major dramatically debating whether the question is to be or not to be (yes, that one’s me), another storms out of the group over an anti-woke comment. Some move cities, someone becomes a self proclaimed poet and someone decides to reinvent themselves by dyeing their hair red (also me). The inside jokes begin to fade. The Goa trip pact you made in seventh grade? Forgotten. The gossip fuelled lunch breaks? Gone.Â
It’s not dramatic. It’s not betrayal, it’s just life pulling people apart who don’t run parallel. There isn’t always a big falling out. Just a quiet unraveling that is so subtle you don’t even notice it. Slowly, the glue starts to wear off. The conversations get shorter. The laughter becomes awkward and you can’t recall the last time you laughed so hard it made your stomach ache and now, it leaves you wondering when things began to shift.
We start carving out space for who we really are. We realise that maybe we didn’t really like One Direction, we just liked feeling included. That we enjoy reading a lot and it doesn’t need to be a secret anymore just because someone once said it was boring and uncool in eighth grade. Â
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel
But then there are the ones who stay. Not because time froze or you have common interests but because you learnt how to grow and change together. The ones who keep showing up, not as often as before but with the same unwavering support. The ones who don’t need daily updates to understand. Who see you and understand you, even in your silence, even while being separated by miles. The ones who remember the version of you that laughed too loudly and cried too easily and still love you for who you are becoming now.
Those friendships are real and rare. They aren’t always loud and perfect but they are deep and stand the test of time. They are the kind of bonds that hold through versions of you that even you struggle to recognise.Â
So here’s to the friends who drifted and left valuable lessons behind. More importantly, here’s to the ones who stayed, the ones who remind you that despite all changes, some things are always rooted deeply in love. Maybe you don’t have daily hour-long calls, maybe the group chat is filled with just birthday messages, maybe you don’t remember their class schedule by heart now but they still remember your celebrity crush in eighth grade.Â
The truest friendships aren’t always about holding on tightly or giving each other updates daily. It’s about growing freely side by side, even when life takes you in different directions. It’s knowing that you can go weeks without talking, and still talk as if no time has passed. It’s about giving each other space to evolve and still choosing to show. Real friendship doesn’t demand closeness, it simply exists, no matter how far you’ve wandered.
For more stories that celebrate the ever-evolving bond of friendship, visit Her Campus at MUJ.