Friends come and go. “It’s normal for people to grow apart.” I’ve heard it all as people I care about exit my life time and time again. Losing friendships will honestly never be something I will get used to, no matter how often it happens to me. However, each time a friendship falls through, I learn, take in the situation and improve myself as a person and friend so I don’t continue to make the same mistakes. So yes, you can say it’s normal to lose friends, and maybe it is, but I don’t think that’s something I should be trying to do. Rather, something I should be avoiding happening again.
Losing friendships is something that typically hits me harder than most. There was a point in my life that I valued friendships more than family. And although I’ve learned to appreciate all in my life, I still keep all my friends near and dear to my heart. I value those who chose to keep me in their lives and appreciate all the time people give to spend time with me. I hope I am equally as good of a friend to my friends as they are to me, no matter how we might be in the future. But I try not to think of the “what-ifs” in my friendships, but to embrace and appreciate the memories in the moment. Finding that appreciation, but also balance and care for maintaining my friendships look differently though. There is no “one-size-fits-all” method when it comes to friendships, especially when it comes to friends in two different states.
I feel like maintaining friendships in two different states because of college is a unique experience not enough people talk about. I feel like there’s two cliches people think of when it comes to out-of-state students and their friendships. First, the one that got away. The person who cut everyone off back home, left and never looked back. Starting completely fresh and only has friends in their college town. Then, the one that never left. Sure, they “moved” away physically, but their entire life, personality and friendships are back home. Always on facetime, going home as much as possible, not really making an effort to meet people in their college town. How about the people who have friendships in both though? It’s never talked about enough how hard it is to give friendships equal treatment, especially when different friendships require different things. No matter how important these friendships are, it’s going to be difficult to maintain the friendships in both areas of your life.
I don’t even deserve to complain about maintaining friendships back home. I’m the one that left. I can’t hold it against anyone that I don’t see or speak to them as much as I did when we saw each other everyday when I’m the one that left them behind. Even then, even if the friendship can withstand the distance, which many cannot, the expectations shift. Instead of seeing each other every day at school, you see these friends maybe 2-3 a semester at most, and only if that friendship survives the distance. Even with communication, you never worried about it before. Maybe you both didn’t call much then because you would see each other soon anyways. Now? If either one of you doesn’t go out of your way to call or text, there will be long periods where you don’t hear from each other and you’ll know less and less about each other. It sucks. It’s like growing apart unintentionally. Even if the friendship is still good, little things like these are missing and you feel it. There’s a lot more work that goes into making a long distance friendship stay strong. That’s why I am forever grateful for the friends I still do have from back home because they adjusted with me, and put in the work with me so that our friendship can still be good. For example, my best friend and I have never lived in the same town or went to the same school. So, we were always used to consistent texting and visiting each other. So, when we went off to college, this was no different. Now, we text just as much, and visit each other in our respective schools at least once a semester (or twice total as we each go see the other once). Planning visits, making trips and memories out of them, and dedicating time to make sure I see her is so important to me. I’ve always said that I think our friendship is as strong as it is because of how we always seem to miss each other’s company, no matter how short or long ago we’ve seen each other. But it’s details like this, different friendships have different needs. Some of my friendships are just solely better when we see each other in person and without checking in on each other, and other friendships have grown stronger when we talk everyday through text or call. It’s all about identifying what works for each friendship and putting in the work to keep up with those changes while being away to help keep a distanced friendship strong.
However, at school all those in person aspects that made your at-home friendships strong before are now at play. You see them more often, you make more casual, little memories. You get to catch up unintentionally because they’re physically there as things in your life now occur. Not only that, but you now leave them too. When you go home for breaks, and you catch up with old friends, you will miss the new friends you have made. You will think of them as things back home will remind you of them. There will be memories they will still miss out when you’re back home, even though you typically see them more. So, no matter where your friends are, somehow in some way, you will always be leaving them at some point and in some capacity, always miss the other when you’re with the others, and they will always somehow miss something that happens in your life. And even though college friends are more present in the moment as you’re away from home more, they miss the background knowledge that I think can make a friendship feel whole. Not to discredit the strength or the version of you that these new friendships know, but they weren’t there for your early developmental years. They don’t know about your crush from 10th grade, or when your parents were always fighting and you needed a place to stay, or your red hair era. But that Uno card can reverse too, your hometown friends don’t know first hand who you are at school, who your campus crush is, who you’re beefing with now or that god-awful professor that made you cry. There’s bits of your life that each friendship will miss out on. And that’s part of the beauty of the differences in friendships, you’ll always be developing and changing as a person and different friendships will witness and be a part of different parts. And although they might not share the same key events in your life, they all build up to be important people from all parts of your life. Without the friends from before, you wouldn’t be the person you are now to make new friends. And in the end, although there will always be this imperfect balance in your friendships, there’s such a privilege in saying you have friends all over. It’s a blessing to have friendships that have been there through the different parts of my life and to still have them, to have time to see them all and to have different friends to come back to, no matter the destination.