"you'll grow apart from your high school friends. college will be where you meet your lifelong friends."

I remember the summer after I graduated. Almost every parent who had went through college, and anyone making their way through (it seems like) had told me this. So, like any young "adult" going out into the real world, I believed them. I spent my entire summer after I graduated spending every waking minute with the friends I had come to call family over my years in my little hometown. If we weren't all busy working, you could find us together. I figured we would all just drift apart once we went off to our separate schools.

After that first summer ended, our group chats continued multiple times daily, and we always made time to see one another on every. single. break. Often times making trips home on certain weekends just because we knew that most, if not all, of us would be in town. Our lives were still very much intertwined in the town that we had all called home for the past 18 years.

Fast forward to now being Juniors in college, and being in the military, not much has changed. If anything, we have grown closer. No, our group chat isn't blowing up with notifications every minute of the day. No, we don't all always come home for breaks. No, we don't all go on the same spring break destinations. But, when we do get back together it is as if nothing has changed.

I've realized that friendship doesn't mean talking all day, everyday.

Even though we don't talk every day, or every week, I know that when I need to vent out about how I'm supposed to finish three weeks of homework in one weekend (even though I'm guilty of procrastinating) or why "so and so" won't text me back (even though they probably won't matter in a month) they are the first ones to answer.

I've realized that friendship doesn't require seeing each other all of the time to make sure that it's still there.

It might be weeks or months before we are all together in the same place for more than a few minutes, but when we are...nothing has changed. We're still the same girls who blare throwbacks in the car and sing at the top of our lungs down some back roads.

I've realized that we'll all find new friendships, but they don't replace the bond we have.

Having been at separate colleges for going on three years, we have all developed bonds with many different people. Some we would have never guessed we'd be close with. This doesn't mean our friendships are replaced. As a matter of fact, I'm grateful we have all found friends to be there for them when we cannot.

I've realized that distance really does make the heart grow fonder.

Distance leaves you with two options: to forget relationships completely, or to work a little harder to maintain them. We still text each other on days when Mondays are a little harder, or when we feel like we can't make it through one more week of school. We just can't. It's the little things to let everyone know we're thinking of them, even as we are all leading completely separate lives.

So, to anyone who thinks relationships have to be lost because life is taking you in all different directions, I'm here to tell ya that it doesn't have to happen. This goes for friendships, relationships, acquaintances, basically any form of communicating. Sure, it's a little more effort from all sides. But, when you have friends that make getting out of bed a little easier, and feeling like you'll never pass that impossible class..possible, you hold on to them.