I was prepared to write about how the looming end of college was having an impact on the way that I was navigating new, old, and tumultuous friendships. However, the end of college no longer looms but rather was ripped away from me and my peers in the blink of an eye. Instead of the long, drawn-out tear-jerked goodbyes that were inevitably destined to take place in the Big House while Al Gore spoke to us about the dangers of climate change, or the drunken weeps during our last night at Skeeps, or the last Georgia Reuben at Zingerman’s, I hopped on a plane, saying goodbye to no one but my two closest friends.

​

So, here I am. Sitting in my childhood bed, surviving off of the brief and numerous facetime conversations, reverting to club penguin for social interaction, and the constant reminder that for the foreseeable future I will be confined to this (albeit spacious) house with my parents. To top it all off, it’s raining in LA. It never fucking rains in LA.

​

I digress. Before the world was flipped on its head, I found myself constantly ruminating over the state of my friendships and watched as my behavior began to shift when my relationships were confronted with the inevitable expiration date of graduation. On the scale of normal fixation to uniquely me, I would say that this particular fixation sits much closer to the “uniquely me” side. As far as I can tell, most people are not determining the future of their friendships as if this “expiration date” is the end all, be all of college relationships.

​

I have one friend in particular, let’s call her Anna, one of the aforementioned “two closest friends,” with whom I have had a tumultuous and endlessly frustrating friendship. The reality is that she isn’t one of my closest friends anymore, she probably isn’t even in my top five (which I think would also ring true for her), yet I find myself referring to her as nothing but one of my best friends.

​

We met freshman year at Shabbat at Hillel. She was from LA, I was from LA; we were both Jewish, and we would soon end up in the same sorority. We lived in different dorms, which seemed like an insurmountable issue during the depths of winter, but managed to see each other constantly. I didn’t realize, though, how vital the distance was to our friendship. As the end of freshman year approached we decided to be roommates the following year in our sorority with our other best friend, let’s call her Haley (who is still my best friend). That was perhaps the worst decision that either of us ever made, though we didn’t know it at the time. After a year of living together, our relationship was rocky, at best. We spent more time evaluating and discussing our friendship than enjoying each other’s company. While I would love to say that once we moved out and to separate apartments, that would change. In some respects, it did; in others, it did not.

​

The tension dissipated, mostly, but the core of the relationship seemed to have as well. While we weren’t fighting, we weren’t spending much time together. This could have been a normal case of two friends just growing apart; the issue was that our lives were so linked that it was almost impossible. Haley is also Anna’s best friend, and while we have friends independent of each other, we are largely in the same social circle. We existed in this in-between space; we were both aware of the distance that had grown between us, but we were still best friends. The three of us.

​

Then, abroad came. Anna and Haley went to Amsterdam together and I decided to spend my semester in Cape Town. Initially, I was concerned that the 5 months that they were spending together without me was going to hurt my relationship with both of them, but it was actually a period of healing and reconciliation in a lot of ways. While Haley was and still is one of my closest friends, I found myself reaching out to Anna much more. As time has proven, Anna and I are at our best when we are apart. In fact, abroad was a very difficult time for me and Anna was hugely supportive throughout. When it comes down to it, she knows me better than most people and vice-versa. After my abroad program ended, I flew up to spend a few nights with them. It was amazing, Anna and I spent four nights sharing a bed and not a single fight took place. The odds of that happening prior to when I got there were slim to none. I was relieved of my initial concerns and was eager to be back at school with them for our senior year.

​

Senior year was amazing, no doubt, but our relationship was far from that. I can’t identify a specific catalyst but I quickly started walking on eggshells around her, as I am sure she was doing around me. Neither of us wanted to fight anymore, but it came to the point that we were being so cautious that we were no longer interacting. We couldn’t figure out how to remove the bad while retaining the good, it felt all or nothing for us. And, in my mind, at this point, the 80% bad could not be overlooked with the goal of preserving the 20% good. I found myself ready to stop trying. It’s okay, I thought, this friendship just wasn’t meant to be. But Anna wanted to work on it. We had coffee, after coffee, after coffee trying to pinpoint the issue. I wish the answer was different, but for me, it seemed to boil down to the fact that we just didn't like each other anymore. We were no longer compatible, but we refused to face that head-on. Perhaps it was for lack of balls, but I think that it was rooted in this need for nostalgia. She’s been my best friend for four years, am I really going to stop being her friend now, two months before graduation? For some reason, I couldn’t or didn’t want to, fathom that.

​

My relationship with Anna is nothing if not unique, but that internal struggle I was faced with her is definitely not. Friendships of all different levels of closeness were suddenly being reevaluated and approached in different ways. After COVID began to infiltrate, and people started to head home, one girl, who I frankly have disliked since day one, ran up to me as I was leaving her party to give me a hug and say goodbye. I’m not going to miss her, I would find it hard to believe that she would ever miss me, but there we were, embracing as though we would never see each other again, and that it would be a bad thing if we didn’t. I have started reaching out more consistently to people who I fear will slip away unless I make an effort. I have honed in on the friendships with people who will probably be pursuing similar careers or be living in similar locations, out of fear that I will be alienated from everyone if I don’t. I have become less sensitive to what other people say to or about me, because I have relegated them to the pile of people I probably won’t talk to after graduation. What is it that makes change reevaluate everything in your life? It seems obvious, as circumstances change, so do relationships. But, it felt as though I was prematurely evaluating and acting in relationships as though after college ended I was locked into whatever decision I had made once it hit May 3rd.

​

I don’t know whom I am going to meet in the next however many years, and I don’t know which friendships will remain from the past 22, but I also know who the people in my life that I could not live without are, and I don’t fear losing them right now. As for Anna, we’ll see what happens, but perhaps living across the country will just bring us closer together again.