Thoughts on the End of Term

I forgot how boring it can be when you have nothing to do. I finished packing. My room is uncomfortably bare. I like it to feel lived in. It doesn’t. It’s kind of sad. Maybe I’ll take some pictures. It was the first apartment that I had, so I do feel somewhat attached. On the other hand, this place was pretty awful. The landlord was horrendous, the neighbours were ghastly, and I've never been more passive aggressive in my life.

Anyway. Never is it so obvious than at the end of a school year that friends come and go. Over the past few days, we’ve all been saying our goodbyes as we go our separate ways for the summer (or for longer). Every once in a while, I will look up and realise how different the group of friends I see regularly is from what it was just a few months ago. I went to a very small high school, so my friend group didn’t change a whole lot. The people who sat with us during break would fluctuate, but for the most part, there was a steady group of people that were always there.

University is a little different. The friends I made in first year didn’t follow through to now at all. In first year, I was very close to the people who lived next to me in residence, but when we no longer lived with each other, we stopped talking pretty much immediately. The same thing happened again after second year. The people that I hung out with then stopped being in touch as soon as we stopped seeing each other.

The major difference is the amount of effort you have to put in. When you are stuck seeing someone every day, you make nice or your life is inconveniently awkward. Living on your own isn’t like that. If I wanted it to be so, there could be days, weeks even, where I wouldn’t need to see anyone other than my roommates.You have to find time. I think that might be why adults report having less close friendships that people in their late teens.

In a couple weeks I’ll be in a new place without my usual friend circle. I’m sure we’ll text and Skype and do those things to keep in touch, but that doesn’t really do much for me in the “Who wants to see a movie this weekend?” category. I’m sure I’ll meet people, and this is supposed to be the summer of adventure, so we can just add meet a ton of new people to the list of things to do this summer.