I'm one of those people who prides themselves in having long lasting, "forever" friendships. I've had the same guy friends since I was 4, the same best friend since I was 10, and every true friend I make stays in my life for at least many years if not forever. I still keep in touch with the first person I was ever friends with. To be honest, I never allowed myself to drift apart from someone unless I felt the need to end the friendship. But now, after my first semester of college and learning so much about myself and the world around me, I realized that it's okay to drift away from some people even if you still love them and want to be their friend.

I can always tell when I'm annoying people or when I've just become too much for a little while. I felt this way a lot with a few people over Winter Break and I really didn't know how to handle it. I honestly felt devastated and hopeless, as if a few of my friendships were going down the drain and there was nothing that I could do to fix it. I felt rejected... Sort of like the odd person out of the friend group that I always thought I would feel comfortable in. As time went on, I realized that this is okay.

My friends aren't magically starting to hate me for no reason and I wasn't losing important people in my life, we were just having a difference in the paths we're on. It's been tough for me to understand and hard to accept, but I've come to terms with it. There are just times in yourlife when you're not on the same page as some of your closest friends and maybe (hopefully) you can find your way back to them. I wish I could understand why this happened and why I started to feel out of place with the people I felt closest to, but now that I've went through it for the first time, I feel like I've come out stronger. Obviously I'm not happy that this happened, but I know that the greater plan is hard to understand until you've reached your destination.

I love my friends, the ones I still talk to everyday and the ones that I feel distant from, no matter what. They can always reach out to me and I will make myself available. They can always talk to me when they're feeling low, and I know that I will be there for them without hesitation. Sometimes though, there are misunderstandings in which the breakdown of communication results in the (temporary) breakdown of a friendship, whether the problem is confronted or not. It's okay to drift from your friends even if it's sad and it's okay to go down a different path than some of the people you hold in your heart.

I hope that I can still describe my life as one full of long-lasting, fulfilling, and one-of-a-kind better-than-the movies-type of friendships years from now; I still feel that way now even though I've drifted from some of the people I once considered family. People come and go, but friendships are forever, no matter the time spent apart. As long as those different paths that we take meet up in the end, the past doesn't matter.