In today's day and age, it may seem like it's easy - between Skype, FaceTime, texting, and everything in between, we take communication with everyone and anyone for granted.
Group chats with funny names are the norm, calling your grandma on the phone is compulsory, and the days of letter writing are behind us, for the most part. However, it's not always quite as easy as it seems to keep in contact with friends for the simple reason that people are constantly changing with their environment. For that reason, this is an ode to the friends I've kept, the friends I've lost, those I will have in the future, and those I never will.
Starting with the friends I've kept with and who had kept me since day one: maybe you receive a snapchat from me everyday (usually sometime between eight o'clock and noon, depending on when I wake up), maybe we are two of many in a group chat where we discuss a current meme or plans for the day ahead, or maybe none of the above.
I've always believed that the closest of friends do not need to be in touch every moment of every single day. It leads to dismal conversations of what we both already know about one another's day, and fishing for words that are unnecessary. For that reason, it makes sense that our friendship has persisted, whether from pre-school, elementary school, high school, or college. You are the friends I've kept close, loved a lot, and enjoyed life with.
Here's to more laughter, shared moments, and times made together. It's not always easy to keep in touch and stay relevant in each other's lives when there is so much going on day after day, but no matter the distance or days spent without a text, I know that our friendship can't be broken so easily.
For the friends I've lost: it's hard to say whether I'm sorry or not. There was a time when we were friends, when we shared nights staying up and watching movies, or had dinners together where we discussed nothing and everything. I mourn the past, without a doubt, for the reason that it's over. In a past life, we were a dynamic duo, but now we are strangers. Which is okay - truly.
Be it different interests, a petty fight, or no true reason at all, we are no longer friends. There will not be anymore discussions about future plans, because there will be no future where we text long enough to get to a point of connection.
There were friends made for a day, when we were small and barely sure about how the world works, and have since grown apart because we now know enough to know that our visions don't meet. There are the friends who maybe were never our friends to begin with, or those who we were friends with for a long time. We all know them, we all loved them - for however long or short a time with varying intensities and definitions of that four-letter word - but now we have lost them. It's for the better, it's for the worst, but whatever the case, it is. It is time to move on and look for the future.
To the friends I will make in the future: hello. It will be nice to meet you, I am sure. The possibilities are endless, from when and where we will meet, to the adventures we will share and how the course of life will take us. In any case, the pleasure is certainly mine and I look forward to it, though I wish not for any rush. Time will carry on as it will, and so will we. As the odds have it, you will fall into one of the aforementioned categories of friends, and that is not for us to worry about. Instead, let's take life by the reins and enjoy it while we can without counting the days and hours of what might be the end. Cheers to us.
Finally, to the friends I never had and never will have: I can't love you and I can't miss you because I never really knew you. You might have been the person I passed in the hallway everyday in high school, or maybe not. You are everyone I will not know in life because you are the passerby on the street corner, the actor in a movie, the phone operator, or the checkout worker on the register that I didn't get in line for. You are every faceless figure on the road and resident in a city I will never visit. With each day that passes, there are more of you, but it doesn't truly matter.
I likely mean just as little to you as you mean to me, which is fine. You have your life and I have mine. To you, all I can say is that our friendship was never meant to be, and I hope that you are well. If there is another life, perhaps we will meet there.
Or not, that's fine as well.
No matter who you are or our status as friends, ex-friends, future friends, or a simple passerby, thank you and I hope that all of your lives and friendships are just as healthy as ever.