As you graduate from high school, you know that as you go to college you won’t remain in contact with some people you thought you couldn’t live without. You learn you are different people and that sometimes you have to grow apart in order to grow up. This isn’t that story. In fact, this is the story of what happens when someone I never talked to in high school became my best friend after I graduated and why it is the best relationship in my life.
I don’t question our friendship.
You meet people in high school that you think your friends with, but after you leave you learn that you were only friends because you saw each other five days a week. Becoming friends during the summer before college didn’t force me to question anything about our friendship. I haven’t been friends with her for years and we barely noticed each other in the hallways, but now we choose to see each other every day. Our friendship is not forced because we sit with the same people at lunch or take the same classes, but instead we like to do the same things in our spare time and seeing each other all day is something we want to do.
There’s always a story to tell.
Because she wasn’t by my side for every dramatic moment that took place during high school years, there is always something new to learn.The feelings that existed in what I thought were defining life moments have settled and we can have conversations about stupid things we each did or experiences we went through that seem liked they would last the rest of our lives. Each day, I get to learn something new about her, but her past doesn’t matter to me because who she is now is the person I love being friends with.
There’s never any judgment.
As we tell each other stories about the guys we dated and the bad decisions we made, there is no judgment by either one of us. We think the same, act the same and share the same interests. That is why we are friends. We know when to tell each other when we are acting ridiculous, but never would I ever make her feel like she couldn’t come to me with anything. I don’t have to worry about her spreading my secrets, because her secrets are just as bad as mine.
Sure, we don’t have the “remember when” moments from high school, but that is what we are in the processing of creating them. We can talk about all the guys we cried over and laugh at each other as we say “he was such a tool in high school anyway.” We didn’t have much to start with besides the general talk at school about how well the sports team was doing, homework that was due, or the latest scandal that was spreading faster than fire, but I couldn’t be happier to have someone to share those memories with. I learn something new from her every day and I get to create life long memories with my best friend who I didn’t even know until I went to college. Even though we go to school 900 miles apart from each other, she is my best friend; she is my home.
