If you asked me a few years ago while I was still a teenager in high school who I thought my future bridesmaids would be, then I would’ve told you the names of the girls that I was in a friend group with. Not only was I so wrong about that, but it wasn’t realistic at all.
If you ask me now, I would definitely tell you the names of my best friends I’ve made from college as well as the couple of girls that I still am really close with after high school. And honestly, I’m more than okay with that. Because at every stage going forward in my life, I will probably be close to fewer and fewer people from my childhood, which includes high school.
I had this friend, for anonymous purposes let’s call her Lauren, whom I used to be inseparable with for almost as long as I can remember. Lauren and I met in second grade and we were best friends until about my junior year of high school. As we got much older, I started to realize that while she was my best friend during this time, we were changing as people and it was unlikely she’d be my best friend my whole life.
It’s not that I didn’t love her anymore, it’s that she started becoming a different friend than she was before we entered high school. I look back now and am still grateful for her friendship over those past years, but now I know that this friendship was one that was not meant to grow past our childhood and adolescence. We became different people from what we went through.
I still am friendly with her to this day, and root for her and wish her the best but am so much happier and more myself with the girlfriends I surround myself with currently in college. The thought of childhood friendships not lasting forever made me upset, but now I’ve accepted that this is what can happen, and I am okay with it.
One of my older sisters told me something when I graduated high school that has stayed with me even now during my junior year of college. She said, “You are continuously growing as a human being, and the person that you were at the age of 16 years old is totally not the same person you are now.” The people I still talk to from before are people that not only grew up with me but are still incredibly important to me to this day (I still adore them).
However, at this point, I don’t miss the people I no longer talk to, not in a mean way, just in the way that I know we’d probably have nothing in common at this point in our lives. I wish them the best and have nothing bad to say, but I am fully content with not getting lunch with them to catch up over college breaks.
Becoming an adult means letting go sometimes, and while it might be hard at first, it allows you to meet people who you know are really with you for the long run, and not just the people you grew up with.