When Old Friends Become New Ones
For anyone that has had an old friend welcome their way back into your life and leave you confused and bewildered as to why they left in the first place, this one’s for you. Friends come and go. We meet people every day. Hopefully there’s a connection between a few of those people that will lead to further conversations, texts, meetings or even a future friendship. The truth is that we meet so many more people than we will ever be true friends with.
When we’re young we meet peers so easily. As we grow and work our way into the real world, sometimes friends can be harder to come by. We’re more opinionated, picky, judgmental and sometimes childish in our adult dealings with other adults. It’s nice to sometimes meet someone…again.
As we grow we find our close friends in junior high, high school and even college have different paths and different goals in life and this sometimes causes us to lose touch with those friends. It’s not that we don’t enjoy them, not that we don’t want their opinions, and not that we want to distance ourselves from them. Rather, we get so busy with what we think we want and who we think we should surround ourselves by, that we lose touch and then we realize ten years later that we miss that person we used to see every day and celebrate birthdays with.
If you have these thoughts it’s normal. Or at least I’m telling you it is. Who says we have to have old friends we tell stories about, that we still love, that we still think of often, and we grew too old for? Who says we’re too old? Too mature?
I recently looked up a few old friends via our wonderful social media outlets. It’s so easy to find those people that you once enjoyed but grew out of for whatever reason. Some may think it’s juvenile to look up old friends. Thinking, “They don’t wanna talk to me or else they would have already gotten a hold of me.” That simply is not true.
Old friends are new friends with a history! It takes awhile to build those inside jokes, those old stories and the family history that all close friends know. When reuniting with old friends for the first time in a long time it may feel awkward or like the exchange feels superficial. Give it time and let those old feelings work their way to the forefront again. The reward you’ll feel while exchanging with them is priceless. No one else has ever had those past experiences with them that you have. You’ll have years and years worth of catching up to do! People change. You might be pleasantly surprised to find out that the person you once knew is someone you like even more today!
Post by Katie Cernea.
Feature image via.
