At a young age, we are taught that friendship is a very important bond; we are told that our friends will always be there for you, no matter what. The world seems to make “having great friends” one of the key components to living a happy life and in most situations, this is true. I remember back in elementary school, I had a lot of friends. We would go out to the playground during recess and we would have a strategic plan set up in order to get the toys that we wanted before anyone else; it was like we understood each other better than anyone else and even at a young age, I was able to notice that. I never liked to use the term “best friend” because that implied that one of my friends was more important than the rest, and to me, they were all equally as great. Unfortunately, that got me into a lot of drama, even in elementary school. Throughout my entire life, I have always been the center of friendship problems. I had to sit in counseling offices my entire elementary and middle school career because my friends would fight over me and the amount of time I spent with them. I never caused the problems, though, I just happened to always be in the middle of it somehow. It wasn’t until high school that I started to see and understand what friendship really meant. In elementary school, friendship was the people who shared their popcorn shrimp with you, gave you extra candy on Halloween, played with you at recess and saved you a spot next to them at lunch. Friendship was easy in elementary school, and when your friends didn’t talk to you for a while, it wasn’t a big deal, but that changed quickly as I started to grow up.
While all of those qualities were great friendship characteristics back in elementary school, friendship grew into a more complex and harder thing to describe when I got to high school. When I went off to high school, I went to a school where only about three other people from my grammar school decided to go. As a new and incoming eighth grader with only about three friends, high school seemed very scary. I started off the year getting to know people in my classes and to my surprise, making friends was kind of easy. I would sit with new people at lunch every day, I got invited to go hang out with people on the weekends almost all the time, and by the end of the first month of school, I had already had friends in all of my classes. Everything was great, right? Wrong. Toward the end of my eighth-grade year, I realized that going to an all-girls school was probably not going to be the easiest task. If you know anything about girls, you know that having thousands of them all in one place meant drama. At my school, we had “lunch groups.” Why does that matter you may ask? Well boy, you’re in for a treat. Have you ever watched that scene in "Mean Girls" where they take Cady through the lunch room and explain all of the groups of people? Imagine that, but full of girls.
Everyone had their own group of friends to sit with at lunch, and if you ever strayed from that group or sat with someone else for a day, well, you could kiss your original group goodbye. Trust me, I know this sounds ridiculous, but it’s a real thing. So as you can imagine, this whole lunch group thing got me in a lot of unwanted drama throughout my entire high school career. Now don’t get me wrong, high school was the best five years of my life, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything, but it definitely taught me a lot about what it means to be a friend to someone. Losing a friend was always hard, but it wasn’t the end of the world because people always told me that you meet you lifelong friends in college, and sooner or later I would understand what that meant. I went through several friend relationships in high school, some that lasted, and some that didn’t, but I am so grateful for every experience and lesson that those moments taught me because they prepared me for my biggest challenge yet: COLLEGE.
“College is the best four years of your life;” how many times have you ever heard someone say this to you? Once, twice, ten times, a thousand? Yeah, probably a bunch. So this whole time in high school as I am applying to college, getting accepted and graduating, people are telling me how awesome college is going to be and how I am never going to want to leave, so naturally, I’m super excited and can’t wait for it to start. I went off to the same college as three of my best friends and I couldn’t wait to start this new chapter in our lives together. Within the first week of school, I had joined a sorority, made friends from rush week and casually made friends in my classes so I wouldn’t be the quiet one in the corner. For just one week at my university, that was a lot of friendships made, but let me tell you, adult friendships are by far the hardest to hold on to. Throughout my three years in college so far, I’ve been on a hell of an emotional roller coaster. One day my friends love me, the next day not so much. I’ve realized that it is so hard to keep good relationships with people because it takes a lot of time, effort, love and care for a person to know that you care about your relationship with them. I’ll admit, sometimes I let those things slip through the cracks when I am stressed out, or upset, or busy, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t love and care for any less than I did when I wasn’t so busy. Relationships are a lot of work, and I now understand that completely, no matter what kind of relationship it may be. So long story short, I have had my share of friendship problems in college, but what I haven’t told you yet is what I have learned because of everything that I have dealt with thus far.
In Fall 2015, I was accepted into the Disney College Program in Orlando, FL. It has always been a dream of mine to work for Disney since I was a little girl and finally, that dream was about to come true. As you can probably imagine, I was so excited, ecstatic even, to move to a new place with new faces and new adventures waiting for me. While I was sad to leave my friends and family behind, I knew that I had their support and that they would be cheering me on every step of the way…or so I thought. Now, don’t get me wrong, I did have a lot of family and friends who supported me and believed in me the entire time I was in Florida, but a lot of those “friends” from back home also completely left me in the dark. While I was working for Disney, I met thousands of incredible people from all over the world, some from the U.S., others from other countries. I loved everything about these people; they were kind, caring, loving and unlike anyone I had ever met in my life. We all shared the same reasons for being there, which made us all instantly connect since day one. These people reminded me what it meant to have true relationships with people and for them, I am eternally grateful. These people reminded me what I looked for in my friendships and reminded me how blessed and thankful I am to have such wonderful friends and family in my life, whether they were back home in LA or right there in Orlando, and I think that was the turning point of my life when it came to friendships. When I returned home for good in January, I came home with six days until my 20th birthday. Naturally, my wonderful friends were waiting for me with open arms and we enjoyed a great birthday celebration at the new trampoline park that had just opened. Everything seemed to be the same as I left it, that was, until I returned back to school. After spending a few weeks back in the swing of things, I realized that something was different and I didn’t understand why it felt that way. I realized that many of my “friends” who had seemed so supportive of me throughout my journey actually did not care a single bit. Some people hadn’t talked to me since the day that I left and still continued to not care that I had come home. It wasn’t until I walked into a room full of familiar faces, where one person acknowledged me, that I realized something was wrong. My whole life, all I’ve ever done was try to put everyone else’s feelings before mine in order to make people happy. I loved to go above and beyond for people that meant something to me because I wanted them to know how special they were to me, but sometimes I guess that wasn’t enough. I had consulted with my friends back home and away and could not figure out what I had done to feel the way that I had felt when I had walked into that room. It took me a while to fully wrap my head around the situation, but eventually I came to terms with it and moved on. Hoping that things would get better with time, I went about my daily routine and tried to bring myself out of the depression that leaving Disney had caused me. I stayed busy and active with my friends, and it was all getting better. I got accepted, again, to participate in an Alumni College Program for the summer, which meant back to Disney for me and I couldn’t have been happier, that was, until the end of the school year came around. I was more excited than I had ever been, the school year was ending, summer was approaching, and soon enough, I would be back in Disney! My friends were very supportive and super excited for me, and I had seemed to be in a happy place. Unfortunately, at the end of the semester, I hit another bump in the road.
Losing a friend. What a powerful sentence. I've lost several friends throughout your life, why does this specific one matter so much, you ask? Because this one was a friendship I never thought I would have lost. Do you know what it’s like to get a new puppy? You pick it out at the store, you buy it all kinds of presents and goodies, you take it home, and you love it and take care of it for the rest of it’s life, right? Well that is the best way I could explain what this friendship was like. When I first met this person back in the spring of my freshman year, she had seemed like such a wonderful person, so strong, so wise, and so innocent. To be honest, it was actually intimidating at first. I can remember it like it was yesterday. People had told me that she was the perfect match for me, that she was the person that I needed in my life and that she would be my saving grace. Well, they were right. At first I was skeptical because I didn’t want to disappoint her; she was everything that I lacked, and I knew she was too good for me, but I knew that this would be something I would never regret. So naturally, I asked her to be my friend, and from there our relationship only grew stronger. She was like the little sister that I never had, and I was beyond blessed to have her in my life. Every day she taught me what it meant to be a better person, even though she probably didn’t realize she was doing it. She lifted me higher each and every day, and before my eyes, I saw myself becoming a better person day by day, all thanks to her. We had taken the world by storm, and our relationship only grew stronger as time had gone by. I had cared for her and she had cared for me in return, and there was nothing I wouldn’t do to keep her safe and away from anything that was bad or unwanted. It was like I had taken on a motherly role in her life; she had meant the world to me, and I never wanted her to experience any of the hurt or bad memories that I had gone through. Fast-forward to the end of last semester, right where I left off my story. We were great, we had been on a hell of an adventure together and were stronger than ever. We took each day hand in hand and we went off into the world knowing that together, we were unstoppable. Unfortunately, that all changed in a blink of an eye. In the past, we had gotten into small fights, but it was nothing that was not fixable. We started fighting more than usual and one thing led to another and before you knew it, it was like we were strangers. We’d walk past each other like we never knew the other existed, and honestly it broke my heart into millions of pieces every single time. I had been through lots of friendships that had broken apart, and yeah they were tough, but this was one time that it completely tore me apart. I would come home and just sit in my room, in the dark, and try to reevaluate what I did that was so wrong. Was there something I could have done to fix it? Was I too harsh? Did I care too much? Why is this happening? It had seemed like just yesterday everything was fine, what was it that made everything so bright go to gray? This, by far, was one of the hardest and most terrible times in my life, and I just did not know what to do next. She wanted nothing to do with me and she made that very clear as I left to embark on my next great journey with Disney. It was hard to spend the entire summer watching her bloom from afar and not being able to experience it with her. Since I left back in May, nothing has changed. She has moved on to bigger and better things and she is happy without me. While that is a tough pill to swallow, it is something I have no control over and I have learned to accept. The best way to describe it is with the example I used earlier. You take care of your puppy and watch it grow up, and in an instant it acts out and you’re forced to give it away to a new home, where the new parents will love and take care of it, and you have to watch from afar. It was one of the saddest and toughest moments of my life when I had to accept the fact that nothing would change, but it is said and done now, and that is why I am here telling you what it truly means to lose a friend.
You could be the most wonderful person in the world, full of love, laughter, and care, but that doesn’t mean that you won’t experience hurt one day. It has been five months now, and each day I still wonder what I could have done differently. I have learned that the only way to make myself happy is to let go and not dwell in the past, and to look forward to the bright and happy future ahead. I have moved past the hurt, the anger, and the sadness, but the memory still remains. I no longer see pictures and cry, but instead, I see them and it makes me stronger. I no longer feel anything like I did before, instead, I use it to remind myself of what I need to do in the future in regards to my friendships and relationships. I have picked myself up and molded myself into the better person that I used to see when we were together, but this time, I stand alone. Sometimes you need to be brought down to your lowest level to see your true potential, and I think that is what it took for me to realize that this was not the end of the world. I guess what I am trying to say is, never hold back. Never take a single moment for granted and always give everything you’ve got into any relationship you have. Always tell that person how special they are, love like you have never loved before, and never let there be a last word. Don’t let it go too long, because sometimes if you do, there is no turning back. Take it from me, and learn from your mistakes so that you won’t make the same ones the next time around. Sometimes it takes a little falling to realize that you can fly on your own. If you ever find yourself in a situation like this, and you think it is the end of the world, remember that it does get better eventually, and that God doesn’t give you anything that you can’t handle. Never hate or despise the person that you run into trouble with, instead, realize that they’ve made you stronger and pray that God will take care of them and lead them down the correct path in the future. Life is too short to hate and be miserable, so instead, learn from your past, and build a better future for yourself, because you deserve it. God gave you this life because you were strong enough to live it, so don’t waste a single moment; let go and let God.
