“The thing is, we don’t have to hate each other for getting older. We just have to forgive ourselves… for growing up.”
Growing up and moving beyond adolescence is one of the most exciting, scary, anxious, and heartbreaking things that could ever happen to a person. Everyday I learn something new about myself, and the world I thought that I had all figured out. Your plans for the future are changing daily, along with your favorite band and your style of dress. With such an ever changing attitude and outlook, you gain and lose a lot of friends along the way. Remember that kid in your first period class last year? The one that wasn’t in your circle of friends, but was a good acquaintance to you, and was always willing to listen and offer advise. Usually pretty good advise at that. You see them around but are too wrapped up in your surrounding to say hi, or to ask them how they’ve been. I couldn’t tell you how many times that has happened to me. For me not liking a majority of the people I go to school with, every year I meet one person in each class who is practically my therapist. It’s the damnedest thing, it really is. But anyways, the point is, once you don’t have class with that person anymore, you lose all communication with them. To tell you the truth, I am guilty of pretending not to see people. I really don’t know why, either. It’s not like I don’t like them. Maybe I’m just embarrassed that I had not had the decency to stop and say hello the 50 million other times I had seen them.
Honestly, it makes me sad. Not nessicarily that I don’t speak to somebody anymore, but that simple fact that it’s so easy to drift apart from people. It is entirely too easy for human beings to cut all ties with somebody they know. It depresses me to think that someday I may pass by somebody that I knew from elementary to high school and pretend not to recognize them. I mean, we did the whole shebang together, from paper sack lunches to graduation. Why wouldn’t you want to say hi and associate with them?
I’ll tell you why.
People get too busy with their own lives, don’t want to get stuck chatting in a grocery store, can’t bear the thought of reliving those horrible high school years as an awkward band member with braces, or think they’re too good to reminisce about “the good ol’ days”. Truthfully, you can’t get upset with your old best friend who ditched you. You just have to get that…it happens. It’s life. People change, move on, condensate, precipitate, etc. The best thing to do is accept it. Accept the good times you have with people, be thankful that you had a friend that was there. Also, be greatful for the current friends you have. They’re there for a reason.
& seriously, when I see you in 13 years at the supermarket, I’ll be sure to say hello and ask how life’s treating you.
