Low Maintenance Friendship
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Do you have that friend, that you don’t text regularly, yet when you meet them, things don’t get awkward? On the contrary, it feels incredible. Notice the feeling when you catch up with each other’s lives and filling in each other’s stories? Ugh, the best!
I lived in the same city since kindergarten until high school, before I moved to another town for college. I’m still following each other with my kindergarten friends on Instagram. My best friend until today is my elementary school friend. The point is, I’ve never been separated from my closest friends. It was always easy to hang out every now and then because we lived in the same city.
Ever since I went to college, I got busy with assignments and activities. There were times when I couldn’t go home on long weekends, and there were things that took my holiday away from me. I canceled on plans to hang out with my friends a few times. Although I only moved 100 miles away from home, it was hard to manage my time.
Things got rough when I had a fight with my best friend, the one that has been friends with me since we were five years old. She went to college not far from home. It was my freshman year and I was having a hard time adjusting to the new environment. I needed to talk to her about it. I was mad that it took her hours to reply. Sometimes she didn’t reply at all.
I told her off. I told her about how disappointed I was without considering her feelings. I didn’t realize that before I went away, we barely even text because usually, we would meet almost every day. I didn’t know that she’s not really into texting or making a phone call regularly. I was frustrated. I really thought that she didn’t think I was important to her, as she was to me. I never thought that a thing as simple as texting could be a problem for someone. I was being insensitive to judge everything according to my standards.
If you ask me how we made up, neither of us apologized. She just called me one day and both of us immediately knew that we were cool. That’s how I knew how connected we are. We don’t even have to tell each other about our feelings anymore, we just know. I mean, we had been friends for 12 years then — 15 years now! I basically know her all my life.
It didn’t happen only once. It happened a few times before I finally understood what kind of friendship we have. It’s called a low maintenance friendship. We barely talk to each other while we’re away but once we hang out, everything is really exciting! It actually feels nice to not text regularly. There are a lot more stories to tell, and those stories never fail to surprise me.
It came to my sense that, as we got older, we will have more of this kind of friendship with our friends. I mean, we can’t expect them to check up on us every day after they get a job, get married, or even have kids. We can’t just invite them to hang out on short notice anymore. Maybe once in a while, but not as often as we used to. We will have our own responsibilities, our own lives.
I know it might sound unpleasant at first, but we all know that we won’t forget about each other after all. It’s just a part of growing up.
