True friendship forged in high school
February 1, 2010 • Shelby Staab, Editor-in-Chief
Filed under Opinion
Friendship tends to carry different meanings at different ages. In kindergarten, your best friend may be the person who shared their glue with you. In middle school, your circle of friends might include teammates or neighbors. Freshman year, the circle might have expanded to people with similar likes or dislikes in other people.
One thing many people can agree on is that sometimes the bonds of friendship aren’t always formed with the best intentions. Sometimes those connections are purely temporary, or made out of convenience.
Maybe your parents are friends or you attend the same church. Perhaps you have mutual friends or they happen to run in your boyfriend’s or girlfriend’s crowd. Either way, most relations aren’t always made deliberately or many times, against one or both people’s liking.
As time goes along, especially in high school, the grays of friendship turn black and white with the certainty of who your genuine friends are. There are different types of friendships that form in these developmental years: long term relationships that will last well past school and into the real world and others that will only survive until the graduation caps are tossed and you both follow separate paths.
There’s that line that gets drawn in the deep crevices of your mind. It splits and separates the “for right nows” and the “forevers” into neat little categories, maybe sometimes without you even noticing.
Granted, there are those people who happen to be just as immature mentally and socially at the conclusion of senior year as they were walking through the doors for the first time four years ago. It’s a sad thought, but many of you know the truth behind those words.
These are the people who solidify that line into massive brick wall, separating the fakes from the authentic. Those people who are still exactly the same after years of death, life’s lesson ignored, and rough patches. There are obstacles that are meant to be overcome, survived, and learned from, and yet some people fail to recognize these opportunities for growth, leaving them with a small, unsatisfying slice of integrity.
You learn so much in high school, the majority being out of the classroom and in the hallways. After years of observing and witnessing every type of interaction, it’s easy to spot the people who cut others down for sport or blatantly gossip at every turn. It’s like large blinking caution signs on their foreheads, warning of treachery and deceit.
It’s an indescribable feeling, really, but one that I know I’ve felt with undeniable certainty. Maybe it’s the combination of years spent in the same school during this time of growing up and maturing that makes the bonds and connections more apparent.
Whatever the reason may be, there are people who are meant to be in your life, the ones that will be there again and again. Those are the ones worth holding onto.
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