Drifting :( Day 9

Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.

Okay, wierd fact about me: When i am friends with someone we stay friends... 
for life :)

I would say 60% of my friends have been my friends for 10 years or longer (and i'm only twenty, so that's preettty long, ya know? lol) And 90% have been my friend for 5 years or longer.  I don't do the "drift apart" thing well.  I still talk to friends from High School and three of my best friends, i met in elementary/junior high.

I can count on one hand the number of people i considered a close friend that i cannot still say that about. Most of those are because they were a "toxic friend" and the relationship was not healthy.

Sadly, in this case that is not so... we truly just drifted apart.

Meet Amber (in orange, far left) and Mandy (third from left).  That is my sixteen year old self standing between them :) 

...which was my permanent place from seven years old until about seventeen.

Growing up, we were inseparable.  Amber and Mandy were sisters, only 11 months apart, and i fit in as a third sister.  Together, we invented "cookie-cakes" (against the advice of Jo, Amber and Mandy's mom, we used cake batter to make cookies.  They were disgusting, but pride made us eat the whooole batch with a smile!), made numerous trips to silver dollar city, kept each other awake at sleep overs, and even attended the same church and school.

We never had to worry about being left out, we had each other :)

As we got older our dreams changed from starting a Christian band together to starting a family and marrying our princes. It never mattered near as much who the man in the tux was as long as we were standing together during that special moment.  We even promised to get pregnant at the same time! lol

Then, my junior year of high school (the girls’ senior), things started to change.  They were busy getting ready for college, and we started seeing less of each other.  And the summer after they graduated, they had jobs that kept us from our SDC trips, Camp, and even shopping. 

I didn’t realize how much we’d drifted until Mandy showed up in my driveway to tell me Amber was engaged… I didn’t even know she had gotten that serious with her boyfriend. 

I was saddened to know we weren’t friends like we used to be, I felt a huge loss.

Through the years we drifted even more...

  I still see them occasionally, at church, when we visit home, and sometimes we exchange in some small talk. 

But, we’ve changed and I don’t really even know them anymore.

It makes me so sad to think of the awesome friendship and the fun times we had together, but I know that the loss is no one’s fault.  

It’s part of growing up.

…And at least I can say I know what it is to have had such a great friendship :)