in which i ponder upon friendships

They say the friends you make at university are the friends you keep for life. If you didn’t go to university then I suppose the friends you made when you were of university age – late teens and early twenties - will be your equivalent.

Your friends mean the world to you. They are the people you want to share things with, good news and bad; the people you want to make memories with; the people who feel like an extension of yourself. With these friends, time and distance doesn’t matter: no matter how long it’s been, the moment you get together it’s like no time has passed at all. You are connected. Wired.

Life moves on. Of course it does. Nothing stays the same. None of us are the same person we were when we were 18, 19, 20, even 24. People get married, or change jobs, or have children, or move house. Priorities change. Time is forced to be divided up differently. Are friendships affected by this? I think the answer is yes and no. You still care. You still love each other. You still have that connection, but the dynamic is different. Dancing ‘til dawn four nights a week is replaced by one night a week with trashy t.v and maybe you don’t talk as much, meet as much, but you know what? That’s ok.

It stops being ok when you realise that for the most part you are the one that always calls. It stops being ok when you realise that for the most part you are the one that always emails, texts. It stops being ok when you realise that those calls, emails, texts are very rarely returned. It stops being ok when you feel like you are the only one to really make an effort. It stops being ok when you feel like you bend over backwards to help these friends out, and yet they appear to have time for every other person in the world bar you, and it stops being ok when you stop to think before you make that call, or send that email, and wonder why you’re bothering.

Does that mean that you’ve moved on, and if it does, what do you do about that?