In 8th grade, I job shadowed at a local radio station. I was talking to the morning show DJ’s about entering high school and how everything was about to change for me. We started talking about how friendships would change just as they would when I would enter college. They kept telling me that I would lose most of my friends from high school after graduation. I assured them that my friends and I had been a group since 5th grade. Nothing would separate us.

However, I was wrong. They were right.

Here I am, a sophomore in college, and I haven’t talked to the majority of my high school friends in months (at least). I still get together with some of these friends on breaks and we exchange stories and laughs. We talk about how life has changed and how it has stayed the same. We talk about classes and work and roommates. But, I would be lying if I said the relationships didn’t change. I would be lying if I said it was all the same as it were in high school.

Friends that I used to talk to every day, I now go months without saying a single word to. I swore up and down in 8th grade that my friendships wouldn’t suffer when I went to college. "These friendships are too strong," I thought. "We’ve been together too long," I thought.

Then I learned something. I learned that not all friendships are meant to last. I learned that friendships fade so others can burn brighter. I learned that the people I needed in high school weren’t necessarily the people I needed in college. They were the people I needed in high school. I wouldn’t have traded their friendship for anything, but I’m different now. I need different people.

And that’s okay.

For my first semester in college, I tried to keep up with my high school friends. All of them. I tried to make plans to see them on the weekends or every single break I had. I tried to text them or call them often. I tried so hard that I was missing out on building new relationships with people at my new home.

It took me one really hard night of reminiscing on that day in 8th grade to realize that my friends from high school didn’t all have to go with me into my future. They were fabulous friends for me for the eight or so years we had all been together. I loved them. They knew me better than most anyone else, but they needed new people and so did I. We all went our separate ways and began to morph into adults, piece by piece.

This in no way discounts the friendships we had or the times we shared. It doesn’t take away from the nights of laughter or days of singing show-tunes on bus rides. In that time, we were exactly what we each needed.

But as we grow up and change, our friendships change as well.

College is a hard thing. Believe me. It’s hard. But it’s easier when you have friends right there with you, walking the same sidewalks, sitting through the same Evan classes and singing with you in chapel. It’s easier when you build relationships with the people you’re living life with on a daily basis. It’s easier when you are willing to recognize that some friendships will not move into the future with you and that’s okay.

This was a hard lesson for me. I promised myself from a young age that I would never let go of my high school friends. But I did. I still love them. If I get to meet up with them every now and then, my heart is full of joy. But now I have other friends and so do they. And that’s okay.