As we grow up, we tend to lose some friends and gain others. Because I moved to different
schools a lot in New York City, I always found it hard to keep in contact with the friends I made. This led to me feeling as though friends were just there for the moment that you were together for, and when you were apart, that's when you were no longer friends. You become acquaintances, mainly because you end up moving on in life without each other. That bond that you had with them deteriorates and you eventually forget about one another.
On Thanksgiving, while I was rekindling a friendship I thought I had lost months ago, I received a prank phone call. I didn't recognize the voice, but the topic seemed familiar enough that I thought it was from one of my friends that attends college with me. I didn't have their number so I called his girlfriend, who is also one of my friends. I asked her if her boyfriend/my friend, had called me and in true friend fashion word had spread throughout our squad. It wasn't him and so, we began a mad hunt to find the person that had called me, speculating who it could be and whether we knew them. They obviously knew me, they had my full name, and they knew what university I went to. I ended up calling friends I hadn't talked to in ages at one o'clock in the morning trying to figure out who my mystery caller was.
They didn't answer the phone, so my friends and I were stuck with no leads. I decided to just let it go for the night, and if I was still curious in the morning I'd make more calls. The next day, I woke up and as I was about to brush my teeth, I got another phone call. This time it was from someone I knew from high school that I called the night before. We would take the train home together and eat lunch together almost every day with a couple of other people. I asked him if he had called me, but he said he didn't. The conversation would have ended there, but then he asked, "So, what have you been up to then?" I replied with the basic "Oh, school, sleeping, trying to avoid existential crises, how about you?" Our conversation continued from there and I mentioned that we should hang out because we hadn't seen each other in what felt like forever. He proposed meeting up that same day, but I used the same excuse (and a valid one at that) that I had used when I was in high school: I had to clean my room. We both laughed about it, and from there on we ended up solidifying plans to hang out the next day. He called me back at midnight that night, and invited me to a "friendsgiving." People I knew from high school would be there, and he added "I know it's last minute, so you don't have to come, but people would be happy if you did."
When I woke up, I got ready to go over to his house, and I mentally prepared myself for what was to come. What if these people don't like me, or only remember what I was like in high school? Will they have changed like I did? Will they just shun me out because I hadn't been keeping up with their social circles? I got on the train and felt my heart pounding and my hands sweating, and dreading my decision to meet up with these people. I got to the house, and everything clicked. This guy was still my friend, and nothing felt awkward. We chilled out, watched funny videos, played with his dog, and then it was time to go to the get together. The whole ride there, we talked about school, what changed and what didn't, our love lives, and new things that we found interesting. I started to get really nervous on the second half of the journey, when he reassured me, everything would be fine. He basically reminded me that "these people" were my friends, but I was still skeptical about that. Would everyone have changed too much?
We got to the house where the get together was taking place and I saw a bunch of people who I went to high school with. They were all happy to see me, and although we didn't click together as seamlessly as we did when we were in high school, the anxiety that I had totally went away. I continued talking to everyone and more people began to show up. I saw someone who I used to spend all of my free periods and shared multiple classes with walk through the door. We hugged and said hi, and then I mentioned that I hadn't seen him in such a long time. He shot me back a look and said "Yea but we spoke together pretty recently. Just think about it for a bit." I realized that he was the one that called me on Thanksgiving, and then another realization hit me.
The whole idea that I had about friendship, and how it deteriorates over time, was wrong. Maybe not totally and completely wrong, but it was still wrong. I realized that around me weren't just people I went to school with, but that they were still my friends. We were able to talk about the same silly things, and even brought up new things to talk about. They hadn't forgotten about me and I hadn't forgotten about them. Although we might not have been as close as we were when we saw each other every day, we still knew each other enough. Who knew that a call out of the blue would spark a huge reunion between us all.
