Drifting Apart from High School Friends? That’s Normal

Transitioning from high school to a college campus can feel stressful: moving to a new city, living on your own for the very first time, navigating a huge campus, meeting new people and—the hardest one of them all—leaving high school friends behind. As everyone grabs their diploma and hits the highway to start their new journey, keeping up with your high school friends can get overwhelming.

In high school, remember how perfectly everyone’s schedule was set up? You didn’t have to organize your own catch-ups because you could spend time with friends during lunch or get to history class early to socialize. Unfortunately, this same convenience doesn’t exist in college. Now, friendships take more energy and work because you have to work around different majors, extracurriculars, and dorm assignments. One morning, without much consideration, realization will set in. You’ll see that the people you spent four vulnerable years of your life with are becoming distant memories, slowly but surely.

I slowly noticed the changes my freshman year.

The “I miss you, how’s school?” texts became less frequent, FaceTime dates became a thing of the past and I only received calls from my mom and sister because they genuinely missed me and wanted to see how college life treated me.

After a while, I slowly stopped talking to my clique of friends and only found out about the adventures they chose to post on their socials. I realized that our separation didn’t happen because of a fake friendship, but simply because we all grew up and now live very different lives in different places.

This stage of drifting away from your high school friends during college is completely normal. Holding onto a bond not there anymore remains a waste of time and energy, even though drifting away feels hard to accept. But, each time I find myself running into an old friend and fake-making plans to catch up over lunch or Starbucks, I just remind myself that things have changed.

Life can get hectic and busy sometimes and living over 350 miles away doesn’t make keeping in contact any easier with your old BFFs. Over time, they will fade into a new group of friends, as will you.

College forced me to branch out of my comfort zone and find a new group of friends, who soon became my roomies. This new shift in life taught me to cherish relationships with all the people in my life despite time and distance. My college friends now hold a special place in my heart. They’re the ones who hold my hand, or my hair, after a long night of partying. They’re the ones that make me laugh and roll on the floor in tears over the simplest things and push me to succeed when my major classes start to stress me out.

But, to all my high school pals, not a day passes by that I don’t miss you and the silly, childish moments we shared together. I’ll always hold on to the inside jokes, hundreds of pictures and the puddles of tears I shed when we said our goodbyes at graduation. I hope you all succeed in life and think of me too every once in a while.

P.S. I’ll always remain the same diva.