Friendships are one of the most important aspects of life for a person. People have friends surrounding them from the moment they are born. Those can be their siblings or cousins when they are an infant, or maybe even an imaginary friend.
The friendships younger kids develop are fairly stable and can begin to influence where their life will take them. Once they grow up and hit either middle or high school, those bonds they had created may begin to fade or for some they may grow stronger. Friendships can last a lifetime, beginning as a child, going through the highs and lows of highschool and even making it to adulthood.
Friendship means different things for different people, but a common consensus is that a friendship is a strong bond. A friend is someone that you are attached to by affection. Another big aspect of friendship is trust according to DGS Senior Maeve Galvan.
“I think friendship is really all about trust, it’s about a bond but it’s really just like interacting with each other and you are just there for each other. It’s kinda like you can tell your best friends anything or even a good friend, you feel like you can tell them anything,” Galvan said.
But ultimately the people you can even call your best friend may begin to feel like they are drifting further and further away. At one point they could even turn into a stranger. DGS Senior Ellery Johnson has had some very close friends in the past, but as they grow and change they may no longer call themselves friends.
Many people see changes in their friendships during their teenage years. Those changes are likely due to changes in their environments – going into high school – and can also be caused due to personal changes. When teens are growing up their interests can shift and change which can cause breaks in friendships.
Changes in friendships affect everyone in different ways and some handle it better than others. It all depends on the person and the effect that friendship has had on them. Senior Kara Filice stayed with some of her friends for a while, but she also grew apart from some of them and had to navigate that.
“It’s sad because when you have been friends with the same person for all your life and then you just stop being friends with them it’s sad. I just think about all the good times, because there’s no bad blood between me and this person, I just think of the good times that we had, and you know I see them in the hallway and it’s good to think about the memories we had. We just grew apart. So I just think of the good memories, instead of the sad ones. I think we’re all growing and changing, I think as you grow you start to see who your real friends are. You grow and mature so as you’re changing your friends are going to change,” Filice said.
Even though some people stay friends with people their entire life, for others it isn’t a straight path. A person could lose a friend but they could also ultimately find their way back to one another.
“I have friends from kindergarten but It has not been straightforward. We have been best friends since day one of kindergarten. It’s Like we are very close and then we drift and then close again, so it’s like I’ve had friendships like that since kindergarten or friends where we were like pretty close and then just recently we are very close,” Johnson said.
For Johnson, she has seen changes in her friendships through the years– especially in middle school and high school. While for others their friendships have stayed steady and haven’t changed that much. Some teens find their core group in middle school or high school and stay with them for a while.
Even when friendships change, it can be a much needed period of personal growth. Letting people go can lead to bettering yourself as a person and can make you much happier as well as improving your quality of life. Letting them go can also allow you to focus on other things that matter to you.
“The most change happened when I started my family. I was more geared on paying attention to my children and things like that. So when I got married and started a family,” Lichaj said.
Many people go through changes in their friend groups or just friendships as a whole, and sometimes a person is able to reconnect with those friends. But even when that doesn’t happen it is okay to let them go. Friendships change, and people change.
