When I was in high school, I never understood how my parents could see friends of theirs after thirty-some years and act as if not a day had passed. After all, I hadn’t even been alive for thirty years and the idea of not seeing my friends for even longer than two weeks was frightening to me.
Once I went away to college, months of not speaking with or seeing friends seemed reasonable and normal. Shortly after graduating college, I got used to the idea of being out of touch with friends for years at a time and not being sad about it or feeling awkward when we finally did speak.
Recently, though, I’ve gotten back in touch with a couple of friends I haven’t spoken to for years, and it has felt like a long time (not just normal or something to get used to). In my new job, I’m working for someone I was friends with back in high school and hadn’t been in touch with for probably 12 or 13 years previously. And I just recently got back in touch with a best buddy of mine from high school who came out to the Bay Area for her residency. We probably hadn’t spoken to each other in 5 years. When we finally did catch up on the phone, she told me how Facebook had gotten her in touch with two other friends of ours from high school who are now married (one of them with kids even).
The one who is married and with kids I lost touch with about seven years ago, and I was sad about it. We had traveled through Europe together during college. We’d had some great times and shared a number of inside jokes together in high school. But that’s one of those facts of life—you lose touch with people. Sometimes, you lose touch and it seems natural, since you were starting to grow apart anyway. Other times, you lose touch and it’s jarring. They became too busy, but you weren’t busy at all. They ended up not caring as much for the friendship as you did. They moved away and weren’t great about keeping in touch with people who weren’t physically close to them.
I suppose it’s one of the bittersweet pain-joys of being older—the ability to wonder about your old friends: What are they doing now? Why did we lose touch? Is it even worth reconnecting? Would it just be awkward? We would no longer have anything in common?
I may give in to the pressure and sign up for Facebook. Or maybe I’ll just keep wondering…
Yes, I would like to meet old school friends too just to see if we have something in common after all these years.
I was never too much of a socialite in any case, though and I have very few people whom I can call “real friends” as opposed to “school mates/acquaintances”.
I, too, have only a few really close friends, hari, but there are a lot of people I’d place somewhere on the spectrum of really close friends and acquaintances.
And this is why I’m absolutely jaw-droppingly TERRIFIED of losing friends.
I’m in high school; grade 11, and I love a few school friends who I could never imagine losing touch with. And this scares me because I KNOW that one day, I will. I’ll stop calling them, or messaging them on Facebook. I know that post-graduation, it will never be the same as it once was, where we all sat together for lunch and had classes together — memories shared, experiences lived. Life will just move on, and we’ll all lose touch and go our separate ways… and what horrifies me is that this will all seem NATURAL to us.
I don’t want to let that happen. I want to keep Mallory and Chloe and Sylvie in my life forever. And I know that won’t happen.
Garrett, it is terrifying, and I was terrified in high school, too. I had a lot of friends I really loved, and I still do.
But you start to realize that some friends are friends for life, and others aren’t. Then there are some you reconnect with after more than ten years. And you also start thinking of two or three months as not that long. Then you start thinking of two or three years as not that long.
As you get older, time just takes on a different meaning.
Thanks for the reply. It’s interesting because nobody really seems to care when I bring it up. I don’t think anybody will truly recognize and think about it until grade 12, second semester.
Maybe I just have a headstart or something.
One question, though: do you tend to stick with your college/university/etc. friends more than you do your high school ones? Or do you leave those behind once you graduate college and have to do it all over again once you go to work?
I think most people tend to stick with their college friends, but I’d say the people I’m in touch with are about evenly divided between those I met in high school and those I met in college.
It all depends on your priorities… and your friends’ priorities.