You’ll know when it’s time to move on from the past
This morning I had a very lengthy conversation with a friend about not maintaining our once close friendships with our high school counterparts as adults.
We are all on the path that has been laid out specifically for us since birth which means that we were bound to separate from those we used to call our “besties.” The friend we told our secrets to when we were kids. The friend we planned our entire life story with from sharing a dorm room to getting married and having children around the same time. The friend who agreed on the promise of always being in each other’s lives, no matter what happens.
After tossing our caps in the air and celebrating each other for the very last time, we have gone our separate life paths.
After some years, when you find that one friend you haven’t spoken to since high school, you reach out in hopes of rekindling that friendship or continuing where that connection last left off. In some cases, this becomes a brand new journey where secrets continue to be kept and old memories pop up followed by new ones. In other cases, you have reconnected with a complete stranger. The person you once knew, you discover that you don’t really know anymore. The quiet girl whose hair changed like a mood ring and fangirled over My Chemical Romance is now an award winning author with blonde locks and a loud personality who enjoys Jazz and chai tea lattes. The Troy Bolton of your high school is now a writer for a major publishing house and lives a happy life in Manhattan with his husband. The class clown everybody befriended is now a recluse. Your best friend who you spent every single day of high school with, the one friend who came to all of your birthday and slumber parties, the only one who reserved that special seat in the cafeteria for you…is now a stranger who remembers little about your past friendship because it was, “so long ago.”
That shit hurts.
Just remember that it has nothing to do with you. It’s all apart of growing up. In this case, your friend has outgrown you. Your friend lives a life that is different from yours. A life you no longer know anything about. Your friend is a completely different person. Someone you know nothing about.
I am that friend.
The one who doesn’t care to reconnect with those from my past. The one who deleted Facebook because I had zero interest in keeping up with the lives of those I no longer hear from. Not because I don't care about them. Mainly because it doesn’t add any value to my life and who I am today. They don’t know the person I am today or the life I live and vice versa. They were apart of my past as much as I was apart of their past.
I know that if I rekindle my friendships from the past, it won’t be the same because I am not the same person I was ten years ago. They would have to make a completely new judgment based on who I am today, not who I was in high school. They would have to “meet me” all over again and I would have to do the same. This might come with some disappointment if you have a preconceived notion about the person being the same person you met on that first day of high school only to be met with an “impostor.” Then you end up losing said friend because they realize how different you are and you no longer have the same interests or anything in common…blasé, blasé. Of course, this isn’t the entire world. You might have a different experience!
We’re not the same person we were a year or a month or a week ago. We are not the same person we were yesterday. We wake up with a different mindset. Am I going to have this for breakfast or that? I didn’t run yesterday so I’ll take a quick jog today. I was down yesterday with a negative outlook on life but today I feel ready to take on the world again.
We are in a constant state of change. Even if it’s the little changes like waking up at 5am instead of 6am.
When you’ve outgrown your past friendships (or even your current friendships) you will experience a few things.
You know you have outgrown your friends when you:
- No longer feel the need to keep up with everyone's life.
For the longest time before deleting Facebook I thought (a lot) about why I felt the need to continue watching people who I have not seen or heard from in years, live their lives through a screen? The baby pictures, engagement photos, career and travel ops were fun to look at but it brought nothing to my life. I was living vicariously through my past instead of enjoying the gift of the present. As much as I cared for my past friendships, there was no need for me to keep up with hundreds of “strangers.” I do wish them well and the thought of them may pop up every couple of years but it’s best to leave the past where it resides.
2. Find your inner circle of friends becoming smaller.
This was a big one. As an adult, I keep in constant contact with one friend (my best friend since grade 8) from high school. My circle is pretty small, a decent and comfortable size to my liking. I have my immediate family, my close friends and a few co-workers. That’s all I need. It’s definitely not about the quantity but the quality that you surround yourself with.
3. Discover new friendships with like minded people.
When you no longer can relate or keep up with the latest trends or the new gossip and drama in town, you tend to drift away from what was entertaining once upon a time to what’s valuable. You know you have outgrown or are outgrowing friendships when you find yourself not caring about who slept with who. Instead, you are looking for those who contribute to a conversation and make you think. You become interested in learning about the world from different perspectives than how much money so and so made on one IG post. You become interested in the person rather than the superficial parts of that person.
4. Feel like a new version of yourself.
You know you’ve outgrown your past friendships when you feel like you are becoming an evolved person. Your views on the world are met with clarity and understanding. You want to continue on the path of becoming a better person for yourself. You accept the change that finds you. You are no longer stagnant in your life but improving and making progress each and every day. You understand that off days are completely fine and normal to have because nobody is perfect but you keep going and striving to be the best version of yourself for you. The biggest sign is that you put yourself first.
Outgrowing those who used to be our everything is normal. It is apart of evolving and you should appreciate every moment you’ve had in the past with every person that has walked with you on that short journey and played various parts in your life. Without them, you wouldn’t be the greatest person you are today.
-K.L.
