I have this folder from third grade that includes drawings my then best friend and I made for each other. Half of the folder holds the drawings she made me and the other half are the ones I made for her. The folder was supposed to be evidence of our long lasting friendship and the fact that that it would never break. While we do still keep in touch today, we definitely don’t keep each other’s pencil shavings in the back of a folder on a daily basis anymore. My parents always told me that losing friends was a part of life and unfortunately it’s inevitable.
When you are a kid with friends, it could go two ways: either you don’t stay friends for long and you move on to another friend or you make a childhood best friend. Forming a strong bond as children is a special relationship, and I do hear fairly often of people maintaining that. On the other hand, when you lose a friend at a young age, it feels extremely dramatic until, one day, it doesn’t anymore. You go to recess and make another friend on the playground and suddenly the old one doesn’t really matter anymore. Even at this young age, I remember my parents sitting me down as I cried to them about another girl not wanting to be my friend anymore, and they told me that this will happen frequently.
Slowly, as you get older and you lose a friend, it hurts a little more than when you were a kid because it typically is for a reason other than you not liking the same boy band or color. Having a best friend when you get older is about having someone to talk and vent to at the end of a long day, but also to make new memories with and put a smile on your face. Not having that person anymore allows you to be nostalgic of those memories you had or future plans you made together. In any relationship, whether it’s with a significant other or a friend, if they played a major role in your life, then it will hurt to lose them. As an adult, the pain hurts more, but you have a better understanding that some people are made to come and go in your life.
Although we know that friends don’t always last forever and have been told it a million times, it doesn’t necessarily make it easier. No one can ultimately prepare you to lose someone you thought would be by your side for the rest of your life. At the end of the day it won’t be the best feeling, but it’s important to focus on the people that are still in your life. Whether these are your parents, your siblings, other friends, a significant other, or even just yourself. You will always have yourself no matter who or what is going on around you, and knowing that you did everything you could is all that matters.
As cliché as it may sound, people do come into your life as a lesson. If they stay, then that’s amazing, but if they don’t, then we learn from it. When my parents used to say all of this to me, I didn’t want to believe that life happens this way. I wondered how people manage to go through this multiple times throughout their life. I obviously wasn’t thinking about the people my parents came to be after going through it themselves, but now that I have experienced it, I understand them. Life is never going to be easy and this is just one of the many things we will all experience. In the end, we have to focus on our own actions and do the best we can while being grateful for the people who are still in our lives.