From a young age, we’re taught to make friends and learn how to treasure these newly-kindled relationships. I can recall so many “pinkie promises” I made — from preschool to the end of high school — with others to be “friends forever.” Yet, more often than not, those promises never lasted long.
Several of my friendships slowly fell apart as everyone moved to different schools or met new people to hang out with. Of course, these weren’t the only factors for the loss of my friendships. It was also the lack of initiative on my end to maintain them that resulted in losing connections with those I had great memories with for the important parts of my youth.
Over the years, I’ve regretted not reaching out to some of my close friends from middle or high school. Yet at the same time, I feel as if I’ve reached an understanding that some friends will quickly pass with time while others will stay with you for much longer. Moreover, not every friendship will resemble what I had experienced with my close friends: going everywhere as a group, pairing up to use the restroom during breaks, messaging every day — essentially spending almost every moment we could together.
This understanding became even more evident when I went to college. Although I spent the majority of my first two years online due to the pandemic, there were several in-person quarters within that time where I managed to make friends. Yet these friendships were a bit different than my past ones. As everyone was busy and had their own schedules, most of our time together was spent during the in-between periods of waiting for our professors to begin lecturing or walking to our next classes. Despite these moments being brief, they were nonetheless precious. I laughed a lot and learned so much from our interactions. Thus, even if we didn’t become long-term friends and rarely hung out, I’m grateful to have had their company for the time being. We supported each other through the stressful times in the quarter and encouraged each other to do our best in our shared class, all of which helped me to stay motivated during the quarter.
Outside of school, I recently had a friend that messaged me over Instagram to wish me a happy birthday. It had been years since we last spoke, and I thought she had forgotten about me, yet her message led us to talk about our whereabouts in life over the next few days. With another friend I had known since childhood, we set up a date to meet up over the spring break. It had been months since we last met or talked in-depth, but our few hours together in one day rekindled our friendship.
I’ve come to realize that there are so many kinds of friendships; not all of them will be full of back-and-forth messaging every day or spending large amounts of time together. Some friendships will be an occasional catch-up every few months over the phone, an exchange of messages for one day, or a quick meet-up after months of not seeing each other.