To the girl who didn't find her forever friends in college:

I didn't either.

College has always been told to me as this magical story of finding your forever friends and finding that special person you'll marry one day. I had looked forward to it since I was a young kid and dreamed about the days I would find my forever friends in college. They romanticize the whole experience. But for me, it didn't happen.

For me, I found making forever friends to be one of the hardest experiences of my life. I found that people come and go, and only come back if they need something from you. I made friends in high school only because I was forced to see the same people every day and we banded together to survive. For me, college was much different.

College was full of struggling, long nights studying, and heart break. Friends from high school promised to keep in touch and never followed through. Those study group never ended up in a new friend gained. For me, college was never that magical place that people always talked about. College is college, not a Hallmark movie or like the magazines had depicted.

There were freshmen mixers, clubs to join, of course they had classes, but with all of those things happening, I still never found those forever friends. For a long while I thought there was something wrong with me or that my shyness really was getting the best of me. I spent both my freshmen and sophomore years yearning to find those forever friends I'd been told about so many times before. But each year, I'd come up short and with no more friends than the year before.

There's no real advice anyone can offer you, other than being yourself. And to never give up on finding those friends. I'm writing this article to tell you that you aren't alone. You weren't the only one who didn't find their forever friends in college. I'll keep the hope that one day soon I'll find my forever friends.