What college has taught me about relationships, whether those be romantic or platonic, is that not everything that is meaningful should last forever.
For me, coming into college, everything felt so new: new people, new friends, new relationships. I feel like, in those first couple of months, everyone starts to form connections quickly, and these connections feel intense because they’re happening in a very unfamiliar environment. For a while, it’s easy to believe that these people will be in your life long-term. But what I’ve learned over my past two years in college is that sometimes they don’t always stay, and that’s okay.
There is something both uniquely yet universally painful about outgrowing people you once felt close with. It doesn’t always mean something dramatic happened–sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t–but it’s everything that did happen that makes it the hardest to move on.
The late night conversations where you shared so much of yourself, the inside jokes only the two of you understood, the version of you that only existed when you were with them. It’s all a part of the past that now only lives in memory. Looking back, there’s something almost intimate about sharing those pieces of history.
When you look back on it all, people may say, “This just shows that they weren’t meant to be in your life,” or “Everything happens for a reason,” but that doesn’t make it any easier to accept. Moving on isn’t as simple as just choosing to forget.
Because the truth is, you don’t forget. You just learn how to carry the history differently.
And maybe the hardest part is when someone who was such a constant in your life becomes just someone you see in passing. The casual wave or a quick “How’ve you been?” before you both keep walking. As if there wasn’t a time when they knew everything about you; when they were a part of your daily routine.
There is something almost surreal about that. How someone can go from being so significant to becoming a stranger that you happen to recognize. You learn to exist separately, even in the place where you used to feel so connected.
But maybe that is when history matters the most. Even if someone is no longer in your life, they were still a piece that shaped who you are now. And that’s how we grow.
Something a wise woman (my mom) has told me for years, but I’ve only recently started to understand, is this: we grow the most by holding on to what our relationships have taught us. We carry those lessons into future relationships and friendships: learning how to communicate better, set more appropriate boundaries, appreciate people more deeply, and recognize the people who are not just around for your “fair-weather” times.
So sometimes the point isn’t just to learn to forget sooner or erase what once was, but to let it shape you without holding you back. To accept that even though they are no longer a part of your life, they still made an impact.
That’s what truly moving on means to me: accepting that not everything meaningful is meant to last forever, but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t meant to matter!