Sunday, July 25, 2010

Goodbye's Are Always Hard

Sunday, July 25, 2010
So, to give a bit of background information on this post, I was born and grew up in a fairly large city, so I had a really great university to go to that was right inside my own community. As such, I'm one of the select few who have never had to move away from home for undergrad or for medical school. I suppose many people who had to move away for their first degrees may have experienced friends leaving or having to leave themselves, but I haven't really had to experience that thus far.

I suppose I am coming to the age where instead of moving away for university, friends are beginning to move away for work (after having graduated). I just recently had to say goodbye to a long term friend of mine and it was hard for me to do. We had met each other back in high school and have been friends ever since. It's crazy to think of all that we have went through together, and how much we've both changed since then.

What makes me sad is that I realized although we would try and keep in touch and that we would always be friends, time would make us grow apart.

My friend would go off to a brand new city and become a different person. He will go through hardships and joys that I will no longer be a part of, or perhaps only remotely, and make new friendships and experience new things. Maybe he'll even meet the woman of his dreams there and get married and start a family. Likewise, I'll be stuck here and going through clerkship and residency will also make me a different person. Even if he decides to come back and visit home a couple years into the future, will it be as easy to talk as before? Or will it seem like we've spent a lifetime apart, and that really there is little for us to connect to each other with again.

So I sit here wondering if that's whats meant to be? Do people just move on and leave their old lives behind? As the next few years pass, more and more of my friends from long ago are going to be moving on, to get jobs perhaps even in different countries much less different parts of the country. Where will the future take my friendships? Will I grow closer to only my medical friends and lose touch with all the friendships that have been dear to me since my childhood?

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