I think mostly you expect it to be the distance.
When you first start applying to dream schools and mapping out how you think your future will look like, you see only the miles that you searched on Google Maps and you cry because you think that those miles will be either the beginning or the end of everything. And you’re almost right.
It’s true, the distance matters to an extent. But it’s mostly about what happens within those miles, in those daily routines that you don’t realize are changing you into a different person without you even noticing. You go through life surrounded by new faces with new names and new outlooks on life. And those people make different marks on your life. Meanwhile, the same is happening in your friend’s lives.
I know that I’ve spent countless Facetime sessions and weekly phone calls saying, “I wish you could have been there!” There are so many things that I only wish that my friends could experience with me. After all, you spend your high school years growing in the same direction as your friends—this is the first time that you’ve ever had different stories, different scars, and different imprints on our lives that made all the difference. They see things that you haven’t yet, and you’ve experienced things that they might not understand.
For some people, this will mean that you want to share everything. You’ll draw closer with those friends, and share with them every detail. Those friendships are the ones that matter—the ones that last. But there will be some that won’t be as strong, and there will be plenty of people that will end up reading the same book as you, but finding themselves on different chapters. It’s not up to you to read ahead or slow your pace. It’s not up to you to summarize the entire novel because you want to do this together—it’s okay that some relationships grow thin.
So it really isn’t the distance that makes the difference, really. It’s more about who you become during these years, because after all, they’re pretty vital. You grow and you change in different ways, and that’s okay. Not everything will stay the same, and that’s okay. This doesn’t mean that you love them any less or that you’ll have to ditch them at the rest stop while on the journey to wherever you’re headed: it only means that you should make room for more people in your life that will grow alongside you.
