You spend every second you possibly can together. You can be seen having regular lunch dates on campus. You can't stop laughing when you're together. You have long, meaningful conversations into the night. Ice cream runs are never a "no." You have more fun together than you ever thought you could have with another person. They are your support system, your wake up call, your partner in crime. You're a packaged deal.
You've found your soulmate. They understand the inner-workings of your mind and the little doorways to your heart. They know how to make you laugh and the way to tell the difference between your angry face and your hangry face. Everyone thinks you're perfect together, and it's more strange to see you separated than it is to see you together.
No, I'm not talking about your significant other. This person is the all-important best friend you meet in college.
Your college best friend is entirely different from anyone you were friends with in high school. The people you were friends with in high school were often due to the fact that you spent eight hours a day, five days a week in close proximity with the same people for 13 years, and they were the people with which you found yourself having the most in common. Or, honestly, they annoyed you the least. You would go to football games together, spend the occasional weekend at each other's houses, and celebrate birthdays together, but generally, you left your friendship behind those schoolhouse doors.
Your college best friendship, on the other hand, is based much more on your choice to spend time with that other person. You rarely have classes, at least, outside of your major, with the same people. You may find yourself hanging out with a different group every night, and it's totally acceptable to take a night every once in a while to spend with no one but yourself. You have to be much more intentional about building a friendship in college than you did in high school. This is two-fold: If you don't want to see someone, you don't have to; if you want to spend time with someone, you have to make a conscious effort to see that person. This gives a greater meaning to the friendship.
There is also a realness that is new to college best friendship. It was not uncommon for friendships to become rocky, or even end, in high school over petty arguments, relationships, and other usually irrelevant or irrational happenings. In college, with the (only slightly) matured nature of those around you, these things seem silly. As previously established, you're making an active choice to maintain this relationship, making it special to you, and you and your friend are less likely to let silly things stand in your way. As you develop and grow, your college best friend can call you out on your crap, and vice versa, and you will only love them more for it. They'll have your back when you flunk that test you studied all week for, when your heart gets broken, and when you eat so much pizza you're about to pass out.
As sad as it is, many people discover that some of the friends you had in high school, even some of your best friends, will drift out of your life after that long awaited graduation day. Life happens.
But with life, comes renewal, and you will find new friendships, and they will be beautiful. You will find people who will be there for every up and down. People who love you for exactly who you are and will never judge you because they're just as quirky and strange as you are. College is a time to learn who you are and embrace every inch of yourself, and you will make best friends in college who will help you do that. You will struggle together, laugh together, learn together, grow together. You will tackle adulthood together, and then you will put on The Lion King and eat mac and cheese.
Meeting that best friend in college will teach you that you can have friends who will love you through it all. They will see you at your very best and your very worst, and they are choosing to stick around. The bond you form will be one of the strongest you've ever experienced. This will teach you what real friendship looks like.
Finding your soulmate will be one of the most important things you do in college, and it will change your life forever.
