"Always"

That's the promise you and your closest ones away from home always tell each other as you grow older through the roller coaster times of Middle and High school. The issue is, not everyone acknowledges that there's a fair chance that it won't necessarily be the case. In fact, the overwhelming majority of friendships tend to diminish down and out of sight and mind before graduation, rather than the final day itself. Before you know it, you and/or your best buddy since the 6th grade are at odds and are slowly fading into oblivion of a memory, trying to save the bond you both held for so long: yet the twisting turn in life of leaving High School seems to come wrapped in a curse where on an average basis, it's hard to defeat.

Sad, isn't it?

That's not just life. That's a terrible fact amongst many friendships. Either you and your crew who held weekly Royal Rumble matches in the school's backyard through 10th and 11th grade actually graduate and head to the same college or else there is very likely chance you'll be prone to a bond finding it's way to a ghost town.

Not to say college is a barrier towards keeping a unity at full power, because let's face it, there are stronger roadblocks towards keeping the pace, like one going to college and one going to the Air Force and then another one falling face flat into the dirt and becoming a simple nothing in life. Either side of the dime you look, friendships are always prone to be put on the fence to some degree once leaving High School.

I for one fell hard to this fragment of a curse. Stemming from a range of 10 to 15 key good friends who were by my side since early Middle School, it was hard to believe anything such along the lines of losing them all.

But I did.

One went to college.
Another went to the Air Force.
Another became a druggie.
Someone else moved away and left their memories behind.
One other fancied the pristine, pampered life and traded unity for high value.
And so many others simply fell off into the darkness.

Equally, all never bothered once to try their hand at saving the storied timeline that I once gratefully shared with them.

On an honest scale, that is okay.

I do not hold any grudges or vices for those who either walked out of my life or did not care enough to stay strong to see us through the promises we built upon a foundation so long ago.

However, it has dawned on me as the years flow by, as age progressively rises along with tons of different experiences and new roads to endure, it does not get any easier to uphold even new found relationships with those who stuck around or hopped on the ride. In just a mere 3 days (in a few minutes, 2) I turn 24 years old, yet I still find myself falling in reverse with the pattern. As different from 6 years ago, I now sit on the cusp of little as 2-4 friends. All of which, I hardly ever see anymore. Hardly speak to as much. Rarely have a memory to captivate as why I hold them so dearly.

College. Work. The wildlife. The dull life. They all play a role in the absence of an endearing pact that renders towards history repeating itself.

I offer this message to not one, but all in the dark and to all who fell away:

I am here.
I am nowhere else but in your heart and in your spirits.
Personally, nor mentally, should a bond be addressed to stay alive.

If a friendship is to forever be true, just know my door will stay cracked open to you.

Don't hesitate to come back in.