Throughout my years in this world, I've lost a lot of things: money, jewelry, coats/jackets, countless gloves and socks, occasionally my dignity and most unfortunately, friends.
As I've moved along my twisty life path, there are friends I've gained and lost along the way and some that will be there forever, no matter where I go. I don't want to sound callous about this because it still makes me incredibly sad, but the reality of growing up is that life happens and along the way, you lose track of people and they lose track of you. This doesn't mean you stop caring about these people; it doesn't mean that there are any hard feelings; and it certainly doesn't mean that the door is permanently closed on that relationship. Long-distance friendships are hard and I'm thrilled and grateful that I can maintain the relationships that I do manage to hold on to, especially my 5 college roommates, who I'm pretty confident will forever be a part of my life.
I am one hundred percent a culprit of losing touch as much as anybody, but I have legitimate reasons for it, just as many others do. My husband and I were long distance for a large part of our relationship and unfortunately, some of the time I might have spent on friendships I spent keeping phone dates and traveling across the country for visits. That's probably the largest reason I've lost touch with some friends, but there were others. I lost touch with a few good friends during my senior year of college because we kind of starting hanging out with different groups. Although I had no ill will toward my friends, I wasn't particularly fond of the people with whom they spent most of their time. Also, I had begun seriously dating my now-husband around the same time, so I was spending a lot more time with his friends and our friends from our abroad program. Again, it wasn't any inciting incident. There was no big falling out. We just grew apart. This was something that used to bother me a great deal, and I used to feel an incredible amount of guilt about my part in this separation. What I've realized, however, is that firstly, it takes two to grow apart in these situations and secondly, that it was actually a pretty natural progression because of the courses our lives took.
Of course this doesn't mean that I feel completely great about these turns of events. I don't. A little over a week ago, I ran into one of the college friends who I kind of lost my senior year of college and it was so incredibly good to see her that I cried. Maybe it was because I've become more settled into my life or because I'm more aware of some things I wish had gone another way, but, I realized how much I had cared about this person during college and how great it would be to get back in touch with her. When I got back from my weekend, I immediately wrote her a Facebook message (cheesy I know, but it was my only source of communication) but I have yet to hear from her. This could be for lots of reasons, one being that she may not check Facebook as often as those of us with jobs spent largely in front of a computer.
Regardless of the outcome, I kind of felt like this run-in was a turning point for me. Even though losing touch is natural sometimes, I'd like to prevent that from happening as much as I can because friendships are so important. For me especially, girlfriends who I can really trust and laugh with about anything are things that I really rely on. This made me appreciate so much the friends I keep in touch with over hundreds of miles and it made me think about reaching out to some of the girlfriends I may have lost along the way to see if we can get back in touch again. You can never have too many amazing women in your life who have your back.
Image courtesy of: http://test.metromomsblog.org/
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