Friendships that last a lifetime

It’s funny how people change, and relationships between people change at the same time. Someone that was your best friend, who you were closest with and who knew all of your secrets, suddenly, somewhere, became a stranger. I had a best friend who I shared this with, and the funny part of the whole thing was that I didn’t realize at the time what was happening at all. We became best friends in the sixth grade, our first year in middle school. I can’t even remember what sparked our friendship, that one thing that made us both realize that we had a lot in common and should be friends. Whatever it was, we became inseparable. Looking back I can completely identify the characteristics that had brought us together; we were homely, skinny, and geeky, wanting desperately to fit in with the other kids. It’s not so much that we were shunned by our peers, but we had grown up in groups of people where being smart just wasn’t “cool”.

With my tall, thin frame, glasses and braces, I absolutely looked the part of being the epitome of a dork. My new friend, we’ll call her Emily, shared this with me as well. I will never forget when we would meet at each other’s houses and discuss all of the things going on at school and what we hoped for socially. We both had some friends, but w e longed to be accepted and welcomed to socialize with the different groups of kids that we went to school with. One day, we both received an invitation to a birthday party. The girl hosting the party’s name was Kerri, and she was one of the prettiest, most popular girls in school. We were so excited to go to that party. We went to the mall to find trendy and cool outfits to wear, and talked non-stop about all of the fun things that could ensue from this one occasion. We felt as if we had one chance to prove ourselves to the 6th grade, and we couldn’t blow this at all.

Fast forward a few years and we found ourselves in high school. Emily and I started to become friends with other people, and soon we were barely even speaking. College came and went, and by then, we were almost a figment of each others’ imaginations. I recently came back into contact with Emily, and I hope that we keep up that the friendship that we are slowly working on bringing back to life. We both have had different experiences so far, and have different expectations for life, but even as I discovered the last time I saw Emily, you become close to someone for a reason, and some things never change. Emily and I still have that same sense of humor, and still can look back and laugh at ourselves in our childhood.

From this I have learned a couple of different lessons; one, that no matter how much time has gone by and how far you’ve grown apart, there will always be those friends, those true people you connected with, that you will still have things in common with seemingly forever, and two, that being in a position of feeling unaccepted by my peers has now given me a humbleness that I will never lose. Fifteen years down the road, I’ve found that being cool now is what I’ve had all along, and that is loving yourself, and who you are.