When your high school friends are your forever friends, it’s the hardest thing in the world to come to terms with leaving each other for college. For me, during the last few weeks before I left for school, I was a mess. The idea of not seeing my 7 best friends, my childhood sisters every morning broke my heart. I cried every day just at the thought of leaving them and what scared me the most was not knowing the next time I would see them.

For those few weeks, every time I looked at any of them it would hit me that I wasn’t within a 10-minute radius. I was a flight or a 4-hour drive at the least. Whatever the case was, I had this dreadful feeling that the next time together would be different. But, the beautiful thing about best friends is that things won’t ever change. No matter if you talk every day or once every two weeks, you pick up right where you left off.

Everyone says college friends are forever, but for me I’m lucky to have high school AND college friends forever. Entering college, my roommate and I struggled with being accustomed to “college life.” We wanted our beds, our showers, and most importantly, our home friends. We both went to sleep away camp so we assumed college would be an easy transition, but it came much harder to us than we would have ever imagined.

But what made it that much better, was that we had each other. It’s crazy how close you can become with someone just because you live together. Everyone enters college living with a random person, who becomes their first college friend. My roommate is my best friend and my go to for the next four years. Without her I don’t think I would have made any college friends at all. It was us against the world.

My mindset about making new friends coming into college was bad from the start because I was stuck being obsessed with my high school friends, my forever friends. I couldn’t bear the thought of making a new “friend group”. As all of our parents preach to us... “Make new friends, but keep the old ones” It took me a long time to accept this.

All I wanted was to be home with my high school friends making many more crazy memories together. But all of us were entering a new chapter in our lives and we had to begin to experience new things with new people.

Once I found my people at school, I noticed my life piecing itself together. The friendships I was creating were special and I knew I had found people that I will share a lifetime of memories with. My nerves for finding these people eased, and what excited me most was how much more plentiful my life got, knowing I had two amazing friend groups to bond with. With constant face times to each and every one of my home friends, we felt like we were always together.

The college friends I have made and will continue to make, have opened my eyes and helped me to keep my old friendships while continuing to make so many amazing new ones.