Living a Separate Life from my Best Friends

College is the beginning of the era where your friends start to become your family, and I sure found my college family. Spring semester of University, I saw my friends every single day. Whether it was just meeting up for a quick dinner, or if it was spending the entire day with them even if we were doing our own things. 

There were these two girls, though, that I would undoubtedly call my sisters – Madelyn and Blakley.

This semester proved a big transition for us, and will be the time to really test the power of our sisterhood. Blakely is still attending University, Madelyn transferred schools, and I’m studying in Madrid. Only six months ago we saw each other every day, and now we’re all living completely separate lives.

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Blakely is living the life that I should be. She’s still attending University, taking screenwriting classes, playing on the lacrosse team, hanging out with our friend group, and going to classes in the same buildings. It’s odd to think about her there, living such a similar life but without Madelyn and I. We were thick as thieves as my mom would say, and I don’t like to think about her being there without us. There was one night when Blakely group FaceTimed Madelyn and I at 2am because her and her boyfriend had just broken up. Within two minutes we were at her door in our pajamas, having run from our respective dorms to be by her side. Now when she tells me she feels lonely, I can do nothing but call her on the phone, if I’m even awake with the different time zones.

Madelyn transferred from University to a big state school for a better pre-med program. The football team is better, she joined a sorority, and is now attending a big school meaning she’s getting the traditional college experience people allude to. Packed stands during football season, dressing up for every game and event, and living in a beautiful white columned sorority house. Her life changed drastically from the one we had lived last semester just because she switched schools.

Almost everyone knows that people with ADHD struggle to get tasks done if they’re not written down in a very specific list they can visually see. This “out of sight, out of mind” notion isn’t just accurate for tasks though. When I buy food, if I can’t see it front and center in the fridge, it will go bad. If I can’t see all my clothes in the morning, I won’t think to wear anything I can’t see. This begins to get toxic when it’s in relation to people. Blakely, Madelyn, all my friends from back home, even my family – they’re all out of sight. In the best sense this means I haven’t experienced any kind of homesickness, but this isn’t really how you should think about people. It’s almost as if I’m treating them as a means to an end since I only think to interact with them when we are in close proximity. It’s similar thinking to those who believe we live in a simulation. It’s almost as if I treat my friends like they are bots that just turn off when I am not with them, that I’m the only real, fluid, human thing on this planet.

I get texts sometimes from Blakely and Madelyn saying they miss me and no matter how much it pains me to admit, I’m not sure I’ve felt this same feeling. I love Blakely and Madelyn as my sisters, and I curse my brain for having this toxic way of thinking. I want to miss the downtown trips we took together, miss the breakfasts we would have after an eventful week, miss talking about our goals and dreams together.

I tried for a long time to change this way of thinking with no prevail. So instead I have to actively and consciously work to keep them in my sights.

Whenever I get lost on a path I’ve walked hundreds of times before, I think about Blakely’s sense of direction. No matter what kind of directional predicament I got our trio into while trying to take them on a grand adventure, Blakely could get us out without even a glance at Google Maps. Whenever I’m studying at the library and look up at the clock, realizing over six hours has gone by, Madelyn appears in my sight. If she hadn’t heard from me all day, she would go through every level of the library until she found the table I was studying at. No matter how much work I still had to get done, she would put my papers into my bag for me, and drag me to lunch or dinner. Bella is also a section head at the newspaper and when she finds out last minute she’ll be short on articles for the week, I write her one in record time.

We really are just three girls living three completely disparate lives, but the reality is that after the year we spent together, we will remain connected no matter the strings of life that try and pull us apart. No matter how far away I am from them, how parallel our lives are, they continue to cosmically affect me.

Yours truly,

Calihan