Almost every time I login to my Twitter account, I see an account tweeting something along the lines of “people who are meant to be in your life will always find a way back to you no matter how far they wander.” Years ago, I would’ve never believed anything like this to be true. If someone really wants to be in your life, they would never put themselves in a position to lose you as a friend. People come and go, and those who are willing to stay will stay; that’s life. But what I’ve learned more recently is that sometimes people leave for a reason, and sometimes coming back is okay. This article is for my friend Cara, who left me, but then came back and has been one of the greatest friends a girl could hope for in this world. And for that, I am grateful.

A few years ago when I was still in high school, my friend Cara cut me off. I was confused as to why I was on the receiving end of such an act because I had never done anything wrong to her. We met each other the week before freshman year and became so close so fast. We started hanging out with the same people. We went shopping, out to dinner, to the movies, hosted cookouts, she even helped me set up my Facebook account. She was one of my best friends and then two years later during our junior year, all of that changed. I asked myself everyday in school what happened and sometimes I thought something would change and she would say hi to me again in the hallway, but she never did. We stopped going shopping and doing all of those fun things we loved to do together almost every weekend. We were always great friends to each other, so losing her as a friend left me feeling lost, but looking back now, she did the right thing.

When I look back to my high school years, I spent 3.5 out of my 4 years hanging around the wrong crowd. I don’t mean that as in the people I was hanging out with pressured me into doing crazy things, but the girls I decided to be my friends were actually terrible friends; they were catty and petty and the drama was never ending. By the time I was a senior, I knew they were not the people for me, but I just needed to get to the end of the year so that I could graduate and leave them all behind. When my “friends” decided to turn on me and use me as their new target, I knew that my old mentality of just making it to the end of the year with them would not work anymore. I hate the use the word bullied, but I was, by people who I thought were my friends. We all stopped being friends and with only three months left of high school, I realized that I really didn’t have anyone else. I thought about things a lot and it wasn’t hard to see that some people simply stopped speaking to me throughout high school simply because of who I was associated with. Days after I decided to stop trying to resolve things with the other girls, I was making plans with new people and some old faces who I had lost along the way. But above making relationships with other people, I got to fix mine with Cara.

Cara and I made up in Disney World on our Senior trip and I didn’t take a lot for either of us to say to be able to embrace each other and pick up right where we left off. It wasn’t awkward and it wasn’t like starting over. It was like hitting resume after a year long pause, and the pause was worth the wait to be over. She didn’t have to tell me why she left because I already knew and I couldn’t blame her for looking out for herself and getting out while she could. I was happy for her and now I was happier because we had found our way back to each other. We came home from Florida and started to do all of those fun things together again. We took pictures at prom and graduation and went to each other’s parties and spent long summer nights together. Not even my going away to college could separate us like those girls did.

It’s now two years later and me and Cara are closer than I could have ever hoped. We may not text or call each other every single day, but we both know that we are always there for each other when we need someone. She visits me at school and we can go anywhere and catch up on months of personal stories and drama. We’ve seen each other drift from other people, get into and out of relationships, hop around jobs and lose family. We’ve seen each other grow up and grow as people, as young women. As the years have gone by, we’ve gotten stronger and wiser and of course, closer. She’s one of the very few people who I can trust with my entire heart because regardless of certain past events, she has always seen me through it all and has always cared about me as a person and our friendship. As much as I’ll always wish things happened differently for us in high school, I’m extremely thankful that things happened the way they did because we are better, happier and stronger people and friends because of it. Some people are definitely not worth keeping in your life, as we have both learned, but just when you’ve given up or felt as though you’ve lost everything, the right people will always come along, or in our case, come back.

To the wonderful Cara Gervasi… I love you!