I've been meaning to write this post for a while now, but a long story about this experience would probably be pretty boring or too personal, so I'll just jot down what I learned.
Eight years ago, we became friends. About two years after that, we became really close friends. We shared similar interests. We wanted to achieve bigger and better things. We had each other's backs.
And then your environment changed.
You had a new audience. A new commitment. New priorities replacing old ones. A new world ahead of you. Somehow, that world became your world, influenced by people you had barely met (if you had met them at all). You began to say things I never thought you would say.
You began to alienate the people around you. But do you know why I stayed?
I stayed because I was still your friend.
Of course, we still talked, even as you headed off to college. But through our conversations, I began to realize what a different person you had become. What was normal to you was frightening to me. I felt as if I couldn't even talk to you normally anymore because of your strong, unchanging opinions (ironically, many of them were influenced by findings on the Internet).
At that moment, I realized we had become two very different people.
I remember trying to discourage you from your current lifestyle, to turn you back into the close friend I knew all those years ago. All of my efforts seemed to be in vain. I could do nothing except for watch you turn into something else entirely. It's as if I barely knew you at all. Where did my best friend go?
Back then, I felt a shock. Today, I feel a realization: I was so selfish. I wanted you to revert back to your old personality because I wanted the close friend in you that I always had. I wanted to be able to control who you were. What a stupid, dangerous thought.
It may sound cliche, but I now realize more than ever what my parents meant when they say people change. What's more is that we cannot stop the change no more than we can stop the clock from ticking. While I do not embrace the change in you, I can now come to terms that the change has happened, and there is nothing I could do or could have done to prevent it. After all, it is your life, not mine.
What's more, I've learned not to take friendships for granted. You never realize how much your friends may mean to you until time slaps you in the face.
So at the end of it all, despite what has happened, you will still be in my prayers. I wonder what you think of me now.
