When you graduate from high school and move off to college, everyone tells you that you will lose a lot of the friends you had, whether that is because you just never see them anymore, or they get too caught up in a relationship, or they just have changed a lot.

However, I can disprove that theory, because the friends I made in high school will always be my best friends.

In high school, I was in musical theater, and my friends were such a closely-knit group. It was the kind of group that if there was drama, everyone knew about it and stuck their nose in it. It was the kind of group that you would not only see every day at school but spent every single weekend with.

A lot of people regret and often want to forget their high school days, but for me, high school was the best of times.

Yes, high school sucked for various reasons, but when I look back I don’t think about those times. I think about all the good times with friends and all the times I would just laugh at the crazy shenanigans we would all get ourselves into.

Everyone was a mutually best friend with one another, and everyone was there for one another. Together, we went through everything and we never wavered.

When everyone separated for college, things started to fall apart as they usually do. Now that we are all on our own path and doing our own things, we hardly talk to each other anymore. I like to reminisce about the good old days and think, “What happened to all of us?”

For most groups, we hit the point of no return where all of us are just memories to one another. However, this past weekend a lot of us showed up at Austin for ACL and had the greatest time.

I hadn’t spoken to several people in some years, but that didn’t change anything. For that whole weekend it was like any and all drama and all time apart just drifted away and we were all in high school again.

I had one of the best weekends I have ever had. All of those good times and fun feelings came back, and for 3 days we were all together again.

Of course, not everyone was there, and for the ones who were, it wasn’t like we all agreed, “let’s keep in touch and keep talking like old times.” That didn’t happen, and I didn’t expect it to, we all had a fun weekend and then we returned to our lives. There will be more drama, more people falling out of the group with the circle getting smaller and smaller.

However, I know that no matter what happens between any of us, we will always be there for each other. We are more than memories we will always be friends.

We aren’t the perfect group, and we all don’t get along all the time, but I wouldn’t trade them in for anything in the world.