My first week of college, I made a friend group instantly. We did everything during orientation week together. We ate, partied, and just generally hung out a lot. We were on track to getting pretty close. I remember the words of one of those friends: it feels like we’ve been friends with each other for years, but we’ve only known each other for three days.

None of us really talk much anymore

That friend group lasted about a month. Now, I’m good friends with one of them and then sort-of-friends with another. But the rest I don’t ever talk to, which is kind of sad. I don’t really think about this too often though. My orientation week friends have mostly left my consciousness. But isn’t that itself kind of sad?

I don’t have a hard, singular reason I can point to as to why this friend group fell apart. It was kind of a mish-mash of reasons, from logistics to vibes. But that feels a little bit unacceptable to me — shouldn’t friendship and connection be more important?

This actually happened more than once, and I had a little dorm friend group that also fell apart. That one was more vibes than logistics. A large part of that was my fault though. I kind of cheated on this econ exam, and then I was a little bit too proud of it. And some of them were pretty ethical people. Also, I was just going through general transitioning-to-college emotional turmoil, which I kind of expressed to them, but I don’t think that was the right vibe for them. So I think it’s my fault for turning them off.

Regardless, I now find myself wondering if I’ll ever reconnect with any of these friends from my first semester of college. I’m not actually very upset over losing these friends though. Most of them, I find myself almost relieved to not have to interact with anymore. Being with them almost felt like putting on a persona, forcing myself through contortions to enjoy their company. I'd often get stressed about social interactions and dreaded meeting my friends. Does this mean that we didn’t fit each other’s vibe? That we just weren’t compatible as friends?

If I had to speculate, I’d say that I forced myself to socialize and meet people in the first semester to make friends. But in doing so, I tried to be somebody that I’m not. And spending time with friends went from something that was supposed to be fun to a burden.

But I really dislike this conclusion. It implies that not everybody can be friends with each other. While it might sound naive, I believe most people can be friends. Or at the very least, I can try to be friends with anyone. I like to think that if I can be empathetic, understanding, and likable enough, no friend is out of reach. But maybe that’s not true.

—

In the beginning of college, I was committed to staying in contact with all of my high school friends. I didn’t want to lose touch with anyone. I would have a rotation of high school friends, sort of tagging each one every week, making sure that I was keeping an open line of communication with everyone.

This was quickly overwhelming. My days became filled with nonstop socializing, with any potential in-between periods being filled with either work or calling high school friends. I quickly found myself burning out.

So I stopped. I wouldn’t say I completely lost touch with all my high school friends. But I lost touch with some of them, and the still existing relationships definitely became weaker. I still call them sometimes, but sometimes is significantly less than the all-the-time that I used to do.

Some of the people that used to be some of my best friends are now just friends. And maybe in a few years we’ll be little more than acquaintances, people who used to know each other. It makes me wonder if the only reason we were friends was because of proximity and circumstance. Maybe all friends are due to proximity and circumstance?

Some of my calls with my high school friends were pretty awkward. Most of it because we ran out of things to talk about. There’s only so many ways you can ask “How’s college? Any new romances? How’re your clubs going?” before the disconnect between our two lives becomes obvious. But the idea that you can run out of things to talk about has always disturbed me. Why can’t we just talk? Why does there have to be something to talk about? Is our connection dependent on certain topics that we must share in common?

Are we only friends because of circumstance?

—

There are a few times when I’m aware of a connection or relationship weakening, and I want to actively do something to stall it. People that I admire and whom I’d love to stay close with. But we don’t have anything in common anymore. They go to a different school, or we don’t have any friends in common anymore, and there’s no excuses to see one another.

I’ve tried to counteract this with effort. I schedule hangouts and actively text them. And sometimes it works. They return the effort and we continue to spend time with one another and text with regularity. And all is well. The connection maintains.

But most of the times, it’s more lukewarm. They’ll hang out and they’ll respond to texts. But hangouts feel awkward and texts lack momentum. It’s discouraging when the texts lack substance to respond to and continue the conversation. And there’s pauses in conversation during hangouts where neither of us are quite sure what to say. Every effort I make to maintain the connection kind of feels unreturned.

If I had to guess, I wouldn’t say that they’re actively trying to let me go. They just don’t put that much effort into maintaining a connection with me. It’s more like they probably are very rarely this intentional in relationships. And the ones they are intentional with are probably SOs, very close friends, and family. I’m not offended that I don’t count in this number.

Sometimes it feels like these amazing people, people I was once great friends with, just don’t care about me anymore. And the more I hold onto them the more slippery they become, until they slide completely from my grip.

At the same time, I’ve been on the opposite side of this. I’ve had friends who've annoyed me with how often they texted me with texts I kind of didn't care about. But I try to empathize and remember that they’re just trying to reach out and maintain the connection. So I always try to respond quickly and enthusiastically.

Others ask to hang out too often, and I just don’t have that much energy in me. I used to always say yes to those hangouts anyways, though I’ve since stopped.

Sometimes though, the reason I don’t want to spend time with someone else is not lack of energy. It’s because I genuinely don’t enjoy their presence. Maybe I don’t find them a good person or they're a weak conversationalist. And I’ll usually respond apologetically, blaming something like homework or prior plans. This really worries me, because this is also exactly what I would say if I genuinely had homework or prior plans. This means that when I ask someone to hang out, and they say they have lots of work to do, they might just not like me.

So maybe all the people I’ve been reaching out to who don’t respond enthusiastically just don’t like me. And there’s no way to tell.

—

I’ve only lived nineteen years on this planet so far, and I’ve had the same handful of friends for the vast majority of those years. I guess coming to college is my first real big transition in social landscapes. It’s stressful suddenly having to navigate this territory of insecurity and vulnerability.

There are still so many more years and stages of my life that I still have to go through. I have no idea how I’m going to make friends once I reach adulthood and graduate college. I asked one of my mentors during my internship about having friends when you’re older and he said: “People will enter and leave your life as you get older. You need to learn to accept it and reach out to the people around you now.”

The only people I regularly interact with who are in a different generation are my parents. They don’t have that many friends. Most of their friends are actually just parents of my friends. Though, I guess there’s an argument to be made that I’m only friends with some of my friends because our parents knew each other.

So according to my tiny sample of middle-aged people, once you get old enough, you lose all your friends.

—

I don’t think there’s any overarching generalization to how friendship works. As useless as this statement is, friendship is kind of just vibes and circumstance. You can try to put more effort and intention into a relationship, but there’s no guarantee that it’s going to work. At the same time, you need to keep reaching out in order to get closer. But it’s probably not a good idea to force a friendship. And sometimes, despite how you might feel about it, a relationship has long past its strongest point, and maybe it’s time to accept that.

I don’t have any strong conclusions to end this post on. I just wanted to share some thoughts I’ve had about this. Reading this over, I feel like I’ve said so little of substance. But then again, I’m still pretty young, right? So maybe I just don’t have that much to say.