In "Lifelong" Friendships

**This post took a really melancholy turn, and I'm not my sure why that happened. I'm posing it anyway.**

Karina and I made the executive decision to skip the awkward stage here, actually. We overpasses the part where we can't be ourselves around Madame, Ty, and each other. I appreciate that.

 

She is a very real person and coined the phrase "meeting lifelong friends that we'll never see again" for me to use, which I truly appreciate. This is something I never really had an accurate phrase for until now. For those of you not living the life of a precocious teenager: we (young adults especially and maybe just people in general) are constantly thrown into these short term situations and forced by circumstance to bond with people. These people are often incredible and relatable and beautiful but you're then torn apart after a week or a month so. You're then left with someone who you can talk to about anything at all, who knows all your secrets, and has the bizarre ability to say just the right thing exactly when you need it- and they're thousands of miles away. You call them lifelong friends when you're with them because they "just get you"- and you're sure you'll never meet anyone just like them ever again. And you never will. 

With texts and Facebook and Skype, there are always a million and one ways to contact these people after you're no longer in the same location as them. You reassure them that you'll invite them to your wedding and you mean it too. You make hypothetical plans to meet up with them over spring break in college or thanksgiving maybe.

This is not to say that these relationships aren't valuable. Believe me, some of my closest friends are people I spend more time on the phone with than talking to face so face.

Some of the people will get tired of texting back you after a few weeks. Some of them you manage to keep in contact with for years on end, knowing how truly beneficial they are to your life. But none the less, all of these people are exactly as Karina put it: 

Lifelong friends we'll never see again

If you're lucky, you'll see them for maybe another few days out of your life at some point in the future. You'll drive out to meet each other or run into each other in a coincidence. But it's never going to be the same as it was when you became friends. 

It's always going to feel insincere, making this genre of friends- at least for me. Because they truly are disposable people and I have never really liked the idea of that.

And Karina gets an A++ because the first day we met we did, indeed, point this out. It's important to keep in mind; doing so is the reason I've been able to be in one hundred and one summer programs without having emotional breakdowns. Plus, it's an excellent reminder of how important it is to live in the moment. You never know for sure how much time you have with anyone at all.