One night the summer before our freshman year of college, my six best high school friends and I - blasting music in the car and feeling nostalgic for the glories of high school - began screaming out the window, “#HIGHSCHOOL4EVER!” This aggressive statement became what is now one of our favorite catchphrases. We use it when weird/scandalous photos of kids from our class come up on our newsfeeds, we use it when the Breck homecoming queen and king are announced, and just recently we used it when we decided as a group to purchase unreasonably expensive seats for the One Direction concert this upcoming summer.
As fun as it is to throw this phrase around when we uncover ridiculous selfies from junior prom, if we are being honest with ourselves, we all know that "high school forever" is a lie.
I went to a small private school with the same best friends since second grade. For this reason, we were all confident that we would have no issues keeping in touch when we finally made it to that Holy Grail we call college. At first, it was easy. It was natural to talk on a daily basis because that is all we had ever known. Our group text was almost too active, as we texted each other all the little things that happened in our days that totally reminded us of this person, or that this person would think was sooooo funny. But as high school became more of a distant memory and we became closer with our college friends, communication became less frequent. Texts shifted from “how’s your day?” to “how’s your week,” to the frantic, “how’s your life?!”
Being thousands of miles away from our high school friends forces us to evaluate these relationships that we once held so dear. We realize that our friends from high school, who we at one point felt equally as close to, now fall into three different categories.
There are those few friends that you still feel compelled to text on a daily/weekly basis, and who you realize that you want to have a consistent presence in your life. It's not a hassle to text these friends because you are genuinely curious about how their sister is doing and how things are going with their roommate/that guy from their English class.
And then there are the friends who you reach out to every once and a while. You share a brief synopsis of your life with them, tell them you miss and love them, and the cycle repeats every month, or every few months. These are the friends that you continue to keep in touch with both out of habit and also a natural desire to continue your friendship that has lasted so long.
The strangest/saddest part of the physical separation from your high school friends is recognizing that certain friendships will fade entirely. Sometimes it's the realization that your friendship was based on convenience or that it only existed in a group setting. Maybe you have changed, or maybe they have, but as time passes you find that you simply lack the same connection with certain friends that you once did.
So to all of you rising college freshmen, the moral of the story is that your high school friendships will inevitably change as you each go on with your post-high school lives. It will be tough to come to terms with the fact that you will barely keep in touch with some of the girls you once thought would be in your wedding, come sophomore year of college. This fact might seem depressing, but it shouldn't be.
My high school friends will always be my high school friends, even if our relationships have changed. We will always text each other when we see our 9th grade physics teacher in Macy’s and when we are reminded of the ridiculous events that transpired Halloween senior year. We will see each other at Thanksgiving and at reunions and we will still act like teenagers together when we are married with kids.
High school might not be forever, but our high school friends will forever hold a special place in our hearts.
