Coming home for the summer after freshman year of college is vastly different than what I had expected. I had been warned that I would lose friends, lose contact with people from high school, and even lose the ability to connect with my best friends on the same level. I knew things would change; I was prepared for things not being the exact same as they were last summer, before we all departed on our own separate paths. However, I did not truly expect for the drastic change to occur as quickly as it did. In high school, eleven of us girls were inseparable. Plagued by our fair share of drama, as I’m sure every group of high schools girls are, but still inseparable. We swore we wouldn't be that group that lost touch throughout the first year of college.
And we didn’t. Of course I lost some friends along the way, which is understandable. But the relationships I truly valued, I made a point to keep. What people don’t tell you about coming home for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and spring break, is that everything will seem normal. You are only home for a short period of time, and it is not long enough to truly notice the differences in the relationships with friends from home. However, when I came home for the summer, it was apparent exactly how much had changed. It’s not that we lost contact or changed for the worse or better, which was what I had expected. The truth is, all of our lives simply continued on without the others in it. And along the way, we each realized which relationships we truly valued and which we didn’t.
While friends don't disappear out of your life completely, the relationship changes. You both get busy, you don’t have time to just lay out by the pool all day or gossip about drama over white mochas at the local hipster coffee shop, like the summers before. What most people don’t tell you, though, is that this is okay. I thought that since I didn’t lose these friends, everything would be the same as summers before. But it’s definitely not that black and white. I’ve learned that its okay to have the type of friend you only see once every few weeks, or the friend that is constantly busy, so can only pencil you into their schedule for a quick froyo date.
Just like your life continued without your high school friends, so did their lives go on without you. And that’s okay. As long as you treasure the time you do get to spend with friends from home, the relationship will still be there. And although your relationship may not be exactly the same as before you left for college a year ago, embrace it. Embrace all the wild stories they tell about their new best friends at school, yet still make time to create new wild stories this summer. Don’t spend the whole summer wishing you were back at school; embrace the changes, be crazy again, and make new memories while you can. After all, you miss college while you're home for the summer, but in two short months you will be laying in your new apartment missing your home friends just as much.
