Growing up, I was always a social butterfly. In elementary school I was constantly yelled at for talking too much. As I entered middle school, I had a group of friends yet I always felt like I was the outsider. They all seemed closer with one another than they did with me but when you’re that young, you don’t question much. Come high school, it was the same scenario. I had a group of friends but after some time, we all found new friends. I entered my first relationship and spent all my time with a boy that I thought I was in love with and isolated myself from everyone else. How naïve, right? What a typical high school move.
When college rolled around, I found that it was harder to make friends. I never did the full dorm experience and I entered a university when I was a junior, making it harder to break into the cliques that people made their freshmen year. Yet I found the people that I got along with and I clung to them as much as possible. Now here I am 2 years later, graduated from college, 23 years old, and finding close friendships ending more often than I’d like. It has made me take a step back and reevaluate what I value in a friendship and why these friendships are ending.
The older we get, the harder it is to find true friendships. And when I say true friendships I mean someone you consider family. Someone that you can turn to whenever you need, through good times and the bad. They have to put up with your character flaws and you theirs. When you do have those friendships, it’s harder to hold onto. Sometimes you grow out of a person. It took me awhile to realize that this okay. I have had friendships for 5+ years that have ended because I grew up and realized that we had both become different people. It’s normal to want to salvage a relationship that was once so meaningful but if it no longer holds the same significance to you, it’s okay to move on with life. This doesn’t make you an awful person. And truth be told, it’s probably going to hurt. The end of friendships can hurt a hell of a lot more than a break up. But as we grow through life we change, our schedules change, and the things that mattered before no longer matter and with this comes new beginnings and new ends.
So if you’re anything like me and struggling to balance the friendships you have, distance yourself from the ones that no longer benefit you, or create new ones, just remember to stay positive. It may hurt and it may be a difficult pill to swallow but life is to short to deal with people who don’t bring out the best in you. Life is too short to make excuses for people. Cherish those who you do have in life and anyone who is worth your time will stay in your life.
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