To the friends whose Facebook photos are the only thing reminding me that they aren’t 14 anymore.
To the friends whose last names have faded but whose faces remain.
To the friends whose phone numbers have been lost among a long series of changing numbers and lost phones.
To the blonde, British girl who was my absolute closest friend for a year. The girl who adopted me when I didn’t speak the language at school and whose family felt like mine as well. The girl who I saw and barely recognized once as a teenager — walls suddenly covered with posters of pop stars I disliked and TV shows I’d never seen. We would never be best friends again, the space between us was far too wide.
To the group of friends who initiated me into high school and into independence. The ones who offered me my first drink and made me learn how to break rules, even if they were only the small, insignificant ones. Who knows where most of you are now? And to the one who for years refused to fade, who still checks in. The one I still visit with no awkwardness or hesitation.
To the friends — no, family — who I saw every day for the past year. The ones who knew how long I took in the shower, what I liked to cook, how easily I tripped on nothing. To the ones who I saw so much that the littlest thing became a dramatic story to recall over dinner or on the bus. It’s hard to talk now. There is no common ground, no more shared experiences or mutual friends to report on.
To all the friends that have left or that I have left and to all of those people who exist only on my screens now. You shaped who I am now, even if I no longer know who you are.
Moving around isn’t an uncommon story. I know that. But as much as I know that, it can be isolating and difficult to square with the much more straightforward lives of many of my friends from my hometown, a small suburb. This is also true of many of my fellow students in my dorm. For so many of them, freshman year is their first year away from home, although for many of them (myself included) college is less than an hour away from their parents' house.
However, my family has moved around a lot — my childhood in my hometown punctuated by a year here or there. Taking a gap year abroad this past year has added on to that reality. Each place has brought with it a new daily routine and a cast of friends and acquaintances that at this point are all tinged with nostalgia.
Now, each visit to those places I used to call home is fraught with the tension and pressure to see everyone, to make up for years of lost or paused friendship in just a week or two. It’s stressful to feel like the weight of so many friendships rests on a visit that might only happen once a year, if that. At the end of the day, though, that stress always reminds me of the more important thing, which is how incredibly, completely grateful I am that I have had the chance to meet and be close to so many different people. Being pulled in every direction just lets me recognize how many people I have to fall back on.
