I came into my senior year of high school on top of the world. I had my core group of friends by my side, I knew what college I was going to and that I would get accepted to it and I knew that in a few short months, I would be done with a school that I was starting to outgrow. Little did I know that everything was going to change by graduation.

To start, my high school was small. There were 67 students in my graduating class, 400 in the middle and high schools combined and all on the same, small campus. It was a private Catholic school, the only one in the area in a town of about 100,000 people. That’s just a long way of saying that, by the time I reached senior year of high school, I knew everyone in my grade, and to some extent, my school, fairly well.

In general, my grade got along pretty well. However, we still had very defined cliques and groups. I had my group, and we had been pretty solid for the four high school years, with people coming and going as they pleased or as the typical high school drama occurred.

Groups were most evident at lunch time, when all the juniors and seniors had lunch at the same time in our small cafeteria, and groups really separated out. Our lunch table had grown quite a bit at the beginning of senior year, with five or six extra people there at any given time. At first, it was really fun. New people and new ideas were being tossed around and we all were getting along really well.

Despite the new people, my then-best friend and I remained close. We still had our spontaneous Sunday breakfasts, our nearly weekly sleepovers and our 3 a.m. Walmart runs. She was still the closest friend I’d ever had. I could tell her everything, we had all the same interests and we fit together so well.

Flash forward to April. Things had been getting strained with her for a while. I’m not going to bash her, because that’s not what this is about. But I will say that my parents had seen the writing on the wall about this friendship for years, and as we hit bumps in the road of our friendship, they constantly warned me that it was going down a bad path. Looking back, our friendship was incredibly toxic. We were too exclusive for so long, and I became too dependent on that friendship to find happiness.

Then April came, and suddenly she was in her first relationship. She had told me things wouldn’t change, that we would still hang out together and stay best friends, but I knew that wouldn’t be the case. It should have been a sign. Months before, I resigned myself to the fact our friendship probably wouldn’t last through the beginning of college that coming fall. I was right, but that end came much faster than I thought. All of a sudden, my best friend wasn’t there. I reached out, desperately trying to hang onto the friendship we shared, but every time we were together, it wasn’t the same. A new barrier was there, and all of a sudden, I wasn’t her best friend.

I was crushed. I didn’t know what to do. I reacted in a way I shouldn’t have. In my pain, I tried to cling to that friendship, but without her there to cling back, it fell through my fingers. With two weeks left in school, I was desolate. We had a huge fight in that second to last week, and despite talking it through and making promises on both ends, nothing came from it.

Graduation was the last time I saw her. She gave me a hug, surprisingly, and we exchanged congratulations and after that I left, she left and there our friendship was left. In the following months, I eventually let my friendships with the rest of our group fade. They brought back memories that were too painful to deal with.

So, what's the moral of this story? What message can be found here? Honestly, I still don’t know if I know. What I do know is that falling out with a friend is its own kind of heartbreak, and it was a heartbreak that took me the rest of the year to get over.

What I also know is that I'm so thankful it happened the way it did. It saved me from dealing with that heartbreak during my first semester as a college freshman, another very vulnerable time for me. I can now reflect on everything that was wrong in that friendship, everything I did wrong, everything she did wrong and everything that I needed in a friend that I wasn’t getting from her.

I’m more selective now in the people I get close to, and I know that if I’m not happy in a friendship, I can’t bundle all those feelings up. I have to deal with them. I know that friendship is a two-way street, that both people have to play their part. I know that it's OK to say goodbye to high school friends, to outgrow them and to fall out with them. It’s all part of the growing process.

It will be OK, you’ll find new friends. You will not be alone forever. This experience will not define you, it doesn’t mean you’re not a good person or a good friend. It just means that you and that person weren't meant to be.

I'm now lucky to have two of the best friends I could ask for, two best friends who uplift me, who bring out the best in me and who I want to bring out the best of. We have great love and respect for each other, and I know I will not re-live this incident with them. I'm also lucky to have a group of sisters in my sorority who I know accept me and love me for who I am, and who will always be there for me. And finally, I'm lucky to have that group of people who are always there for me: my family, who love me always and unconditionally. I'm surrounded by so much love that I cannot help but be happy.