Reaching back

With the start of a new school year, everyone is eager to impart his or her advice on how to face the future. In doing so, they largely forget about their pasts. While I wouldn’t dare suggest I have any better advice, I think people often forget to look back and think about how they want to maintain past relationships moving forward. I’ve done a lot of reaching back as I’ve grown, and I think it’s perhaps something we all, incoming freshmen and returning students alike, could do a bit more conscientiously.

Growing up, I saw my friends on a regular or semi-regular basis. Keeping in touch was simple because we all lived in the same neighborhoods and attended the same schools.

The first time this changed was in eighth grade when I was accepted into a magnet program at a different high school from all my friends. I was terrified at the prospect of losing my friends, a fear only exacerbated when an older peer who had also left for a magnet program admitted that she hadn’t really kept in touch with any of her old friends. I began to second-guess my decision. My friends were what made me happiest, and leaving them completely felt like betraying them and dooming myself. She continued, though, to say that she supposed it was her fault for not reaching out more to her friends; she suggested simply that if maintaining those relationships was important to me, I should take the initiative and responsibility into my own hands. And ever since, I have.

Knowing that these relationships were important to me, I took the initiative to make plans with my old friends even when they didn’t reach out on their own. I made sure to check in and make movie or dinner plans once a month or so, even as I began to develop just as meaningful friendships at my new high school.

Of course the whole thing just happens all over again. All my close high school friends eventually separated, and at Princeton my new friends span across class years. Last spring, three of my closest friends on campus graduated. This year, even more will do so, and then it will be my year to leave as others go elsewhere or stay. My two close romantic relationships both ended at least in part because we were from different classes and had to move apart. That’s just how life and growing up go.

Being separated from people you’re close to sucks. There’s just no other way to put it. But there is something you can do other than just move on and try to forget the past, because that is much easier said than done. Since high school, I’ve found that by taking the situation into my own hands, not only do most relationships last, some even grow stronger.

I’ve found that small things can really go a long way. When my friendships become long distance, I just try to make a concerted effort to make sure I’m still there for them as much as possible, be it paying attention to milestones (big or small) in their lives, following up on things they mention, or reaching out if we haven’t spoken in the last week or so.

Granted, not all past relationships last. I’ve simply drifted apart from some old friends and I’ve also concluded that some relationships weren’t worth the emotional effort it took to try to maintain them. Though I was happy to bear the responsibility of maintaining my relationship with my high school best friend, I was getting little friendship back no matter how hard I tried to reach out. The so-called friendship and the emotional weight I was bearing hurt more than it made me happy, so I consciously stopped putting forth that extra effort it takes to maintain a long-distance friendship. It hurts, but I’m a lot happier knowing that I tried to maintain the relationship at first than I would have been had we drifted away simply because neither of us even tried to stay connected. If maintaining a relationship makes you happier than letting friends go, to me it seems worth the effort, but if not, perhaps it’s time to let go and enjoy the relationships you do have, new and old.

That older peer I ran into back in eighth grade probably doesn’t remember that conversation. She might not even remember me at all, and I’m sure she doesn’t know that I still live by those words she imparted back in our seventh-grade science classroom. But I have and I do. And whether you are a first year who just split from all your school friends, or an upperclassman whose close friends just graduated, you ought to too. As you relish all the friendships you have and will have at Princeton, know that you don’t need to leave the old ones behind as you do so. Take your friendships into your own hands and don’t let something good slip away without at least attempting to hold on tightly.

Marni Morse is a politics major from Washington, D.C. She can be reached at mlmorse@princeton.edu.