With years, you gain and you lose friends and all this is totally normal, even if it doesn’t feel like it. It’s easy to understand: we change during the time and so do our friends. Sometimes you grow together and sometimes you grow apart. And nothing is wrong with you or them. It’s just a natural process of your personal development and growth.
Do you remember, after first school years, when we changed schools we always promised each either with classmates that we would see each other still as much as we did every day at school? But then we didn’t, maybe only with a few of them, and definitely not every day. After high school and university, the same thing happened. With few, we kept our contacts but with others, we just didn’t get in touch anymore. It is a normal process, we found new friends, studying or working together and with old ones we just grew apart and had not that much in common anymore.
Accepting this as something normal was a very hard one for me.
I felt super bad for losing friends and for a long, long time I was trying to stretch myself among all the people I know, always trying to find time for them even if that meant that I won’t have time for myself and also for the closest ones at all.
I ran an experiment, around the time my boyfriend and I started dating and of course, I got under the nose that this is because of him, but I stopped calling or texting some friends, the ones I always wrote to first. And you know what happened, my list of friends I regularly see shrunk a lot. I decided I will rather spend my time with my closest ones, with people who really want to spend time with me, than I would try to please everyone with my time just because I asked them for a drink. In the end, this is life and this is a right path we have to walk through, it’s just how you accept it because there are friends and there are FRIENDS.
Some friends are here to stay, no matter what, our paths just keep crossing and ties just get stronger and stronger.
Even if you see each other once or few times per year, the feeling of coziness that these friends give you, the energy, the support, the love and happiness, that is something special. This is something I am really grateful for, for friends we’ve walked through a lot together, through obstacles and super nice and fun times, these are friends that give you the best feeling in the world! I am lucky enough to have quite a few of them and I always say, we cannot really choose our own family, but these friends are a family we choose for ourselves.
Especially when we look back, to the road we’ve been through together, how much we’ve grown together. From being kids to parties and first kisses, to now when we plan our careers, weddings, houses, and families and are (acting) all grown up … we just know how grateful we are we are still together, a lot has changed, really a lot, but one thing stayed the same: us being friends, us being family.
This is something I cannot explain in words, it’s just the best feeling in the world.
I am pretty lucky that I have so many great people in my life: family, friends, my love… but most of all I’m really lucky to have such good friends that they’ve become my second family! We’ve shared so many memories already and I’m sure we’ll make many more in the years that are coming and I’m looking forward to it so much I can’t explain in words.
This is for you, for all my true friends! I love you and thank you for being my friend! <3
