I recently finished my first year of college and came home for the summer. Even though I didn't go to a college that was incredibly far away from my hometown, I went far enough away that I only came home maybe one or two weekends a month.

Since all of my friends from high school were in college and/or busy with their own lives, there were a lot of them that I hadn't seen in months, or even since we had graduated when I finally moved back home for the summer.

Of course, since we have all had an entire year to grow, change, and experience things without each other, outside of the comfort of our hometown, we have all changed.

I constantly see posts on social media about how you change so much in college or after high school that you can't stay friends with your friends from that time, but so far I have found that to be incredibly false. Yes, the girls that I graduated with have changed. I have changed, too.

We're no longer pre-occupied with who's going to win homecoming queen or who has a crush on who or who is going to be on the band leadership team next year. Instead, we've grown up.

Some of us moved away to college and lived alone for the first time, and it made us become more independent. Some of us started working our first "grown-up" job, and we're more responsible because of it. Some of us are engaged and some of us have already gotten married. A few of us are even expecting kids.

In the 12 short months between the time we graduated and now, we've seen and done things we never could have imagined. We've met and become friends with more unique and interesting people than we ever thought possible under the tiny umbrella of our small hometown, and those people have influenced us for the better. We've become smarter, stronger, more tolerant and more understanding. In just one year, we've become entirely new people on the inside.

However, just because we've changed doesn't mean we don't still love each other or we somehow love our new friends more. (Somehow, I love my hometown friends and my college friends equally, and a lot.) We may not get together as often as we used to, or even in the same places that we used to, but that doesn't mean we don't still get together and have a great time doing it.

We may not be as concerned with high school football as we used to be, but that's okay because now we have deeper things to talk about. We may not see each other every day anymore, and as the years continue to pass we may even grow further apart, but that doesn't mean we won't still care deeply for each other.

I have no doubt in mind that if in 20 years I had an emergency, any one of my close friends from high school would be there for me. We have experienced the highs and lows of high school together.

We watched each other morph from awkward prepubescent idiots into strong, confident, smart, beautiful women. We saw each other fall, and we helped each other rise. We witnessed every teenage heartbreak, every stupid fight, every failed test, every tryout, every stressful day, and through all of those experiences we developed a bond that cannot be severed just because we grew up and I think that's pretty awesome.