“Friendsgiving” is defined by Urban Dictionary as “The celebration of Thanksgiving dinner with your friends. This usually occurs on the Wednesday before or the Friday after Thanksgiving Day, since Thanksgiving is usually reserved for family gatherings.”

Most people graduate from high school and never look back. They stay close to a handful of people and call it a day. Other people return home on school breaks and have no one to hang out with because they have not remained close with anyone. I know people who chuckle at the fact that I still have a solid group of friends that I stay in contact with from the “glory days.”

There is a difference between being “stuck in high school” and still hanging out with your old pals. I appreciate and love my college friends, no doubt about that. My high school group of friends sees each other once at Thanksgiving, once at Christmas time and once in the beginning of summer when everyone gets home from school. We use each meeting to catch up with each other’s lives and stay up to date. Most of us are living away from home, and cities, even states away from each other. It’s not like we are all at the local community college partying it up together every weekend, there-in lies the difference.

As we got together last week for our “Friendsgiving,” I did a lot of reflecting and realized time is truly flying. We are almost half way done with our third year of college, and the adult train is full steam ahead. Unfortunately, the older we get the harder it will be to get together each year. We will begin to move out of the safety of our parent’s homes, attending graduate school, starting families. True signs of growing up.

As I sat on the couch of my family room looking at some of the most amazing friends, I started to realize why I love these people. I am so incredibly thankful that I have friends in my hometown that making coming home and visiting worth it. It’s always great to come home and see family, but to have so many friends makes school breaks extra special.

I want to thank my friends from high school for showing me what true friendship is. Friendships from high school are put to the test when you don’t see each other every day anymore. People start to filter out of your life now that you don’t have anything in common anymore. Math classes and sports teams aren’t a strong enough bond. Thank you for putting in the extra effort to maintain a friendship with me. It’s amazing to me that a group of people who have gone off in so many different directions can return home and act like nothing has changed. Thank you for the laughs around the circle as we play intense rounds of Catch Phrase. I am grateful that we can all get together and tease one another as if we were still juniors in high school. I love the fact that some friends stay until the wee hours of the morning chatting and swapping stories from the semester. I am grateful, thankful and truly blessed for knowing each and every one of you.

See y’all at the Ugly Christmas Sweater Party!!