Going home for break for the first time after starting your freshman year of college is a tricky situation. Seeing your family and pets is fantastic. You know they will always welcome you with open arms (or paws). But what about the people you consider to be your best friends? The first reaction is, “Oh we’ve known each other for years! How could it ever be awkward?” But sometimes the opposite is true. You haven't seen each other in so long that you no don’t know how to act with each other. Hugging feels especially uncomfortable. It’s even weirder in a group of three best friends if two have been talking constantly, and the third is left to face freshman year on their own.
This is what happened to me. My two best friends and I were thick as thieves junior and senior year of high school. But when I moved away to Michigan for college, our friendship faded quickly. We no longer had the ability to talk for hours on end, or at least I felt like we didn’t. They still talked and hung out because they go to schools that aren’t too far from each other. Mean while I’m ten hours away. I knew something had really changed when my birthday came and instead of getting an Instagram collage with tons of heart emojis in the caption, I got a simple text that said “Happy Birthday Anna!”
When it was time to come home to New York, I asked them to hangout and the only time they had for me was nine o’clock on a Friday night. They came over for one hour and it was the most uncomfortable hour of my life. The first thing they asked was "So what's new?" which set the tone for the rest of the conversation. Five years of friendship went down the drain in a matter of 60 minutes. They didn’t miss me or need me in their lives, and I figured that out five minutes after they walked through my front door. When they left, I realized I had lost my two best friends. Cuddling with my mom was the only cure for the loss of the special friendship I had.
This experience helped me see that losing friends is very hard, but sometimes it’s for the best. You can cry for an hour or so, but then reality hits and tells you that some friendships aren't meant to last forever no matter how badly you want them to. As you grow up, you have to make choices about who you want in your life. You have the power to pick people that can act like they saw you less than 24 hours ago even if it’s really been 4 months and care enough to text you at the most random moments just to ask you how your day is. You don't need to be someones friend because you've known them since 6th grade. If you end up not being friends with anyone from high school, it won’t be the end of the world. Hopefully by the time you have to load up the car again and head back to school, you’ll have an idea of which friends from home you want to keep, and which friends aren’t worth your time and effort.
