I always thought that the friends I had in elementary and middle school would be my friends for life. The fact is that every time I moved to the next phase in my life my favorite friends became old friends and eventually someone of the distant past. Now that I am in highschool, and a senior, that process of building and breaking friendships has happened faster. What is it about the coming of age that makes keeping friends difficult? This is my theory:
Elementary school is the time where kids get their first exposure to the formation of "clicks". Side note: I never really understood why people felt the need to create subgroups amongst themselves because it only spreads people farther apart. I hear a lot of people who are in my age group and even above my age group talk about how "big brother" and business like to exclude and torment certain people based on race and demographics when really, we learn to minimize diversity and increase the chance of a specific race or demographic at a young age by forming clicks. We tend to stick around what we know and who we identify as similar to ourselves, which brings be back to my story. Although we see the formation of clicks begin in elementary school, we are all of the same kind - young and immature. Everyone wants to be funny, have a lot of friends, say they don't have a curfew and most importantly, everyone wants to be deemmed cool whether they admit it or not.
Once we move on to the next stage of our lives, middle school or Jr. high school, we tend to think that we will be more mature , more ready to attack life, so we drop most of our silly friends and settle for the girls who wear red lipstick already and the guys who have had 10 girlfriends as a 12 year old. In middle school we identify doing "grown-up" things such as wearing makeup and having multiple partners as being mature and even sophistocated.
After moving into Highschool, we realize that the people we associated ourselves with in middle school we're really silly for thinking they were so grown which may have caused them to always have an attitude, be a "debby downer" or even the class clown. When in highschool, most of us don't want to bring those type of people into our new lives as highschoolers so we drop those friends and they each form new clicks.
This cycle repeats over and over again all the time in our lives. Now don't get me wrong , there are some people who manage to stay friends with people they've known to kindergarden but as times change the life expectancy of friendships change as well. More kids are starting to feel like they need to mature faster and enjoy less time as a minor. My message is to try to hold on to your friendships and grow together, unless the friendship is toxic to the well being of one or both partners and in that case and that case only do I say , let it fade away.
