In the summer when I was nine years old, I saw a math tutor about once a week (I know at the time, I resented my mom for making me do math in the summer, but in hindsight I am grateful that she cared about my happiness at school and success that much and was able to recognize that I was struggling). My math tutor, let’s call her Ms. Curly for the sake of anonymity, asked me if I still talked to my friend Lucy (again, not her real name). I replied with a solemn and conflicted, “not really. It’s just that she always wants to play with her dog, and I love dogs, but I just want to play with her more, you know? I’m scared that next year we’re not going to be friends anymore.”

At the time, I was going into middle school, which seemed like quite an overwhelming endeavor which seems silly to me now, as I am writing this just hours away from my high school graduation ceremony and I still know really nothing about life. These age-old, cliche lessons about friendship are ones that you don’t stop to think about and practice until you are faced with uncertainty about the future when you reach certain milestones in your life.

Ms. Curly, patient and genuine, with her finger on the pulse of how to tell kids words that they need to hear while still being gentle, told me that it was okay to feel this way about someone who I considered to be a friend. Friendship is a lot like your favorite pair of jeans, she said. You have your front pocket friends, always with you and right at the hip when you need them, but as time changes sometimes you need to put those front pocket friends in your back pocket so you have room for new relationships as you are both changing.

I always have believed, and I still believe, that reconnecting is always worth it. The worst scenario that could possibly come out of asking an old friend to catch up over a cup of coffee is an ignored text or a simple “I’m sorry, I’m busy.” But sometimes, when you go for that cup of coffee, being with that person feels labored and foreign, and you find yourself unable to organically fall back into the same rhythm. You will keep these friends, your experiences together, and what you have learned from them in your heart, but maybe they don’t fit into your front pocket anymore.

But denim fades and you outgrow different pairs of jeans. I know that even at my thinnest, I will never be a size two, so trying to squeeze into a size two pair of American Eagle jeggings from the seventh grade is a pointless pursuit. That old lifestyle, like that old pair of jeans, no longer fits you. Thus, you need the right people in your life that do not force you into a pair of too-tight skinny jeans when you really want to wear your favorite pair of flair mom jeans.

It’s okay to have holes and tears in your jeans; it just shows that you have lived a little in them and that you had the chance to leave your own impact.

Of course, this is not to say that lifelong friendship does not exist. This kind of friendship is once-in-a-lifetime

Lifelong friendships can also evolve over time. A friendship that may have been comprised of two high school jokers may be the same people who help each other break out of a toxic relationship, attend each other's weddings and family funerals, and tell each other that it is okay to be uncertain about what the future may hold.