When you spend most of your life in one area, you spend most of your life with the same people. Common knowledge. And growing up around them, going to the same elementary school, middle school, Jr. high, and high school, you kind of forget that at some point distance will come between even the closest of friends.
College, as far away as it seems, when it hits you, it hits you hard.
“Where did the time go?”
“We lived it.”
“I’m an adult now, I don’t want to have to make my own appointments!” Briana was pacing around her room, her hands in her hair.
“Finish packing, you leave in less than an hour.” My eyes shift to the only thing in her room: a Missouri State poster hanging upon on her naked walls. All her clothes were piles into a corner on top of her unzipped suitcase.
“What are you? My mom?”
The pile of clothes finally made it out to her actual moms car, we stood on the driveway until the last millisecond. It didn’t hit me, that I won’t be seeing her tomorrow, she won’t be just a short walk away anymore. It just felt like any other day. And that sent fear through my veins.
We hugged and said our goodbyes. I blinked and she was gone. All that was left was the smog from the car exhaust slowly bending into the air.
I walked back home.
A week had passed, it was Monday. Briana and I had set up an agreement that every Monday at 10pm we would call each other to keep tabs. The first few Mondays after she left, the phone calls were always on point. But as the semester rolled on…
“Sorry, babe. I have a huge math packet due tomorrow.” Her voice was somber.
“No you’re fine, I have an eight-hundred word history paper due next week that I should probably start. Text me later.”
She didn’t text me until next Monday saying she couldn’t talk because she had choir.
She had become closer to someone that went to high school with us that also goes to MSU. And this is when it finally hit me. That what used to be a 3 minute walk is now a 3 hour drive. What used to be 10 years of always being right there, it isn’t like that. College is the time we all tend to ignore.
We don’t call every Monday anymore. And I deleted my alarm.
I call her out of occasion, emergencies or just out of the blue if life becomes too much again. She always answers to say she can talk or if she can’t. That’s fine though. We are both busy people.
But this doesn’t mean we are not friends. What we have is something that just doesn’t “fade away” our friendship will not “grow apart.” You can’t replace 10 years of your life, 10 years being in your prime state, a young age. Your most vulnerable stage, we all need one person to have our backs.
Time is a moment. Time is a word, a phrase, a touch, a feeling. Time is doing nothing. Time is doing it all.
When you can not see someone for weeks, months, or even years, and nothing changes, and its like you were never separated, that is true friendship. And time can’t take that away.
