Dear Squad,
It's crazy to think that we've already got a year of college under our belts. At our respective schools we endured the adjustment period, the crazy class schedules, the boy troubles, the friend group troubles, the changing of majors and minors, and the homesickness. Even though we were far away from each other, some of us whole states away, I'm happy to say we still went through it all together.
I remember how heartbreaking it was to leave each other. The ideal situation would have been to all go to the same college, but we were all drawn to different places. With different interests and different needs, there was no way around it. We had to go to different schools. That was hard to accept senior year, but now I think we can all agree it needed to happen. Things will never be the same as they were in the "good old days," but we'll always have our millions of memories to look back on. Thankfully, we stayed close through our first year, and though that would have been significantly more difficult without our group message I think we still would have made it. Honestly, I think branching out and going to different schools helped with this too. Crazy, I know, but I think being apart brought us closer together.
I'm glad we all went to different colleges, and that's something I never thought I would say. Sure, the cliche says "absence makes the heart grow fonder," but I'm talking about something more than that. We spent 6 of the past 7 years completely joined at the hip, and we loved every minute of it. However, it was that one year apart that I think strengthened our friendship the most. For one of the first times, we all had friends outside of our little circle, which could have meant the end of our special bond. At any point, we could have decided that this new world and this new life were all that we needed. We could have left our past behinds us and kept our friendship only in our memories. And yet, we still ran to our group chat whenever we had exciting news or troubling times. We still made plans to get together whenever we could, and when we did, the group dynamic was the same as it was when we left. This year we became adults and individuals, and we still think our little group is one of the best things in our lives. Things changed, we grew, but never apart.
We all made great new friends and memories in college, something we all needed. We needed to be independent of one another to really show us how special our friendship is. Our first year of college put our friendship to the test, and we came out confident that it is not something of convenience, something based solely on familiarity, or something that can be broken by a little distance. We're worth the time, worth the effort, and worth the fight. College is just another adventure on the long list that we have, and the one that we'll be adding to for many years to come. I can't wait to see where life takes us, apart or together!
With love,
Jordan