12th

I’ve previously written on this blog about how unsatisfied I had been with my friendships tapering out with school friends – and the kind of thinking I had done since to ensure nothing like that happened again. In my first two years of college, the fact that it had happened hurt me. In the last two years though, I recognized how natural it was, although it was weird to come back to the same city everyone still called home and be unable to meet anyone at all.

I think the last time I saw several people together, in a group gathering was three years ago. I met a couple of people here and there in the middle, football games, or walking their dog together, but never really got to go out with everyone the way we used to. I think that was a natural consequence of everyone doing their own thing and figuring out stuff. It was great then to find out that a group meet up was actually happening, and that I was free to go. It was a surprise to see one person there I hadn’t seen since my first year ended.

On what can only be summed up as a delightful evening, I learned about the people my friends had become since we left school. A lot of it felt like the old days, but a lot of it felt new: and I think that’s how all meetups ought to be. Nothing stays the same forever, and it would shameful to imagine people as such – yet I did. For a long time, I expected all our friendships to remain exactly what they were at the end of 12th: one massive gang of everyone in our class, hanging out as we used to, talking about the exact same things as we did, and doing all the things we did then. I’m glad today showed me that while our friendships have changed, there’s no reason not to embrace that change. Another thing I recognized at the end of the evening is that there are few people I don’t need to be in touch with all the time, who will still be around all the time – and that’s just as a result of the fact that that’s how school was. We were always around each other, the lot of us, but we weren’t in touch 24*7. We’re a pre-texting friendship, a pre-continuously checking in on each other friendship. Those go on.

They’ll change.

But they’ll go on.