It doesn't hit until the summer after your freshman year of college.
At graduation, you cried and hugged and signed each other’s yearbooks, promising to keep in touch and hang out whenever you were free. The summer after high school, you spent weekend after weekend with your friends going to pool parties and basketball games, gossiping about the couples that inevitably broke up before leaving for college and pre-scheduling Skype calls around your new schedules. Then the time finally came when you all went your separate ways- some to universities, some to community colleges, some to new jobs… and suddenly, all of your high school friends just seemed to disappear.
Sound familiar? Don't worry, you're definitely not alone. Science Daily conducted a survey on a handful of adults, ages ranging from college-level to seniors and found that on average, people kept only about 5% of their friendships from high school.
Ummmmmmmm, what???
For those of you still in high school, this seems like a pretty scary statistic, right? I mean, essentially everyone you see around you now except for maybe 2 or 3 people will be gone from your life after graduation. It's a strange concept to grasp.
And yet, it happens every day. And it should happen. It’s just life.
If you are a person in a special case scenario who has maintained several friendships with the people you were close to in high school years after graduation, kudos to you for finding friends who are willing to carry you through life after braces. However, most of the time, keeping tons of high school friends around is not the healthiest thing to do. And I'll tell you why.
Think about what life was like in high school. Think about the shallowness and the struggle to fit in. Think about the countless “friends” you made just to feel included. Think about the problems you thought you had back then and compare them to your life now.
It's insanely different. In high school, most everyone is completely preoccupied with what other people think of them. Our preconceptions about school were that it was a forced activity, in which we should just do the bare minimum to get by. Our qualifications for a significant other were someone who was moderately good-looking and smelled good. Our idea of success was a good hair day AND a day when you didn't have dead eyes. And when we failed in THESE areas, our friends existed to be our support- our rock in the most minimal of issues.
Can you imagine caring about things so mundane now? Even thinking about the high school mindset makes me laugh, because I realize how foolish it all was. Now, I make myself get out of bed even when I'm sick to go to class because I don't want to miss something I pay for that's going to help me get my degree. Now, I look for a significant other who has a steady job or is working towards his future career and shares my same values and long-term goals in life. Now, my idea of success is spending weeks working on a project or essay and putting all of my resources and learning into it, to achieve an assessment I know it's worthy of. And the friends I keep around me are here for me whenever I fail in these, the important issues- not just when my hamster dies.
Yes, your high school friends were needed. High school's tough. But those friends were meant to be there for you BEFORE you grew up, before you had to get a job, before you had to accept responsibilities. They only understand and represent the part of your past where you were just a kid- the person you were, not the person you are and are working to be.
Obviously, the best friends should be there to see and help you grow. These are the 2 or 3 that you'll hold onto, the ones who encourage you to grow and have a desire to stay in your life. But the shallow people you kept around in high school just to make you popular and give you someone to talk to? Those are definitely not the kinds of friends you can grow with.
I graduated in a class of only 27 people, and I could safely say that I was casual friends with almost all of them. Of those 27, I still see about 7 on a regular basis. Of those 7, I am close friends with probably 2 of them. And guess what percent that is out of my whole class size? Seven. Seven percent.
The friends you and I kept in high school were meant to be there for that time. They were meant to be there for every acne takeover, every breakup that made it feel like the world was ending, every failed quiz, every dramatic loss of another friend. But chances are, most of them aren't meant to be there for when you get that big promotion, when you buy your first house, when you find the person you’re supposed to be with for the rest of your life.
Those moments are for the friends who stuck around through the fire and for the friends you have yet to meet, who will encourage you to grow and be more than your high school self ever could be. Those moments are not for the friends who were there at your sweet 16, but for the friends who will still be there celebrating with you when you reach 60. Those moments are the defining ones that grow you into the person you're meant to be, and the friends who surround you then are the friends who are willing to go the distance- the friends you SHOULD keep around.
If your high school friends are still in your life and you're still building your friendships and growing together, that's an amazing thing. Keep at it. But if you're finding some of those friends starting to slip away for no apparent reason, don't stress about it. They were meant to be in your life for a brief season, and their path is probably not the same as yours. Let them grow and move on, and allow other relationships to enter your life! I promise you, it will be well worth it.
