To my forever friends,

It's officially been a little over a month since the last time I've seen you guys. I'm so grateful that, with your own semesters starting, you made the time to see me almost nonstop during my last few nights home. One of you, while balancing multiple jobs and their first semester of college starting, showed up after a full day of work and classes, to hang out with me all night the day before I left, while the other one picked me up for dinner the second his classes ended and stayed until almost midnight that same night. Even when you guys probably wanted to head out and enjoy your last few nights of summer together, just the two of you on an adorable date, you included me. The day before your classes started, you were up at the crack of dawn to take me out to breakfast with you.

I miss you guys like crazy. I know that it probably seems like I'm super busy and having the time of my life over here, but the truth is that I miss you guys so much. Every time you post a picture of the two of you on an adorable date or you're hanging out with our other friends, I have a moment where I just want to crawl up into a ball and cry because I miss those days when I was a part of everything with you.

I guess I should have expected it because it's not like the world was going to just stop turning back home just because I'm four-and-half-hours away, but when I see stuff happening, I miss you guys just a little bit extra. Especially when I'm sitting in my dorm room surrounded by piles of homework and my friends are either at work or practice or overwhelmed with their own homework. Because it's the little moments that kill me the most. I miss the fires in backyards or the sleepovers or the random drives around town. I don't miss anything major - it's just the little things.

But, enough about the sappiness. The point of this letter isn't because I miss you and I want you to feel bad about something that was my choice. I want you to know that I'm so happy with the way your lives are going. Even though I'm not actively a part of things anymore, when I get a text from you all excited about a grade or a class or work, I feel like celebrating. I brag about you guys to my friends at school so much that they all feel like they know you personally. Like they've known you as long as I've known you.

My walls are plastered with pictures of us and they're not pictures of us on wild vacations or doing adventurous things. It's a selfie of us getting ice-cream where we struck dramatic poses. It's hugging the one male in the group while he looks like he wants to flee. It's holding up cookies as big as our heads or toasting with our Dunkin cups. It's sharing a milkshake together or hugging to celebrate our last cheer competition. It's poses based off of movie-squads in our Grease costumes or squeezing our faces into one selfie for a Pink Ladies selfie. It's standing in my dining room with our backs to the camera to brag about our Grease cast shirts. And every single time I look at one of those silly pictures that shouldn't be so memorable to me, I get overwhelmed with emotions. I'm reminded of how much I miss you and all of the ways we could turn a simple musical rehearsal into a memory, and I'm happy because I'm reliving something so simple once again. And I'm grateful because those of you who still made the wall this year are the ones who didn't allow a year of distance to come between us. In fact, you allowed it to make us even stronger.

So, this isn't a sappy letter to make you cry or feel guilty because I feel left out. It's a letter to thank you for all of those memories and all of the memories to come. Thank you for allowing me go away to school and get away from the high school and town that tore me down so much on the inside, without sending me away because you felt like I abandoned you or neglected our friendship. Thank you for celebrating every achievement with me and letting me bask in your own glories. Thank you for remaining my friend even though I'm not actively there all the time.

Thank you for being there when I need to call you or text you in a panic over classes or other pointless drama that means nothing. Thank you for calling me when you need somebody to talk to just because you know how much it means to me. And thank you for being there the second that I come back home for a dinner at my house or a sleepover or a random dinner out. Thank you guys for always being my best friends because that's the only thing that really keeps me going.