The intimate human bond we create and maintain with others is one of life's purest joys. Humans are capable of forming friendships from a very young age and that behavior continues throughout our entire lives as adulthood stretches onward. Each friendship is unique in correlation to the people involved, considering the intensity and duration of the friendship in mind. We sacredly cherish each of our friendships as we maneuver life with that special person through the ups, downs, and in-betweens that life so often tends to throw at us, yet on the contrary, these very golden tinged relationships often take a turn for the south at heartbreakingly unexpected times.
In my 25 years, I've lived in 3 different cities. My longest lasting friendships to this day have come out of both middle school and high school. We have traveled domestically and internationally together, gone on summer weekend trips, concerts, visited each other at our respective colleges, you name it. That's not to say that we haven't probably annoyed one another with something minor but there is always an underlying sense of respect amongst us. This may have to do with the fact that we are not always on each other's radars and the time we do get to see one another doesn't leave much time for pettiness or drama.
The people who once were my friends are the curious ones. They are a conglomerate of my hometown life and college life, proving that longevity, or juvenility equally, does not safeguard you from losing a special person. I am not a saint and I am not perfect. I am not going to say that I have never cut a person out of my life because I most certainly have. And I have done that for my own peace of mind, and, as karma would have it, I have been on the short end of this stick, as well.
From the end of high school until about 23-25 years of age, you will meet a lot of temporary people. Your close-knit social circle morphs towards more quality people rather than quantity of people. Losing friendships, regardless of their origin, takes place during this temporary period as we focus on graduating from school, getting jobs, spending a healthy amount of time with a significant other, preparing for our future, etcetera, which are all indicative for maturing into the young adults we are to become. Losing a friend over these patterns is inevitable because sometimes that person's patterns are not aligned with yours. Issues will start to arise, but it is how the issue is dealt with and hopefully resolved that could salvage the beautiful connection you have with this special person.
The concerning part of inevitably losing a friendship is that at any point, either party involved in the friendship could pull the plug. All the history, sharing of secrets, inside jokes, bickering, gossiping flies out the window as if none of it ever happened, as if the person you shared those moments with was just there in your life to teach you a lesson, and retrospectively we come to find that they do teach us a lesson after all. We take these lessons as pieces of wisdom to grow from.
My justification for ending friendships with certain people always came down to the basic notion of respect. I respect myself too much to allow longevity outlast the negativity. There is only so much verbal abuse you can tolerate, so much control you will let someone have over you, and so much immaturity that riddles you with anxiety until you realize this person is no longer enriching your life. Never allow your self-respect to suffer because you feel you owe your history, or even existence, to another person. However, being the person who gets cut off is left to pick up the pieces wondering what went wrong only to hopefully understand, too late of course, how it came to be. And we take the lesson with us to create and maintain a new bond to watch bloom.
