To My Best Friend As We Leave For College

I have thought of a million different ways to say goodbye and they all start and end with, I don’t want to say goodbye. To my best friend as we leave for college…

I know we’ve talked about college for as long as we’ve been friends. College was going to be the end all, be all to our high school problems. College would be the best four years of our lives—and we were going to take it on together. Our dorm was going to be by far, the cutest one on campus. Our heads were filled with ideas and endearment that were still a bit naive, and we focused more on what color the lamp in our room should be rather than how different our ideas of the future were. We fantasized about college parties, semi-formals, and pulling all-nighters together during finals week. We had the beginning of our young adulthood mapped out, and we were going to take the world on by storm. This incredible new chapter of our lives was going to be spent together… until it wasn’t.

In a matter of months, I’ll be approximately three hours away while you’ll be staying local.

For the past three years we have been undeniably inseparable—and now I’m going to have to re-learn what life is like without you.

We will both have friends that have no idea about our dynamic. I will walk around campus each and everyday without someone saying to me, “Where’s the other one?”. For as long as we’ve known each other we have been a package deal. And now we must ship off somewhere else in entirely different envelopes.

Our high school days will officially be a memory this August. I don’t know how I will even begin to fill in the gaps that you’ll be leaving me with each and every day.

You are leaving a footprint of inside jokes, late night phone calls, and boy advice that I promise will never go away. Saying goodbye to high school was the easiest, most thoughtless thing I’ve done in the past four years. Saying goodbye to you will be by far, the hardest thing I’ve ever had to say out loud.

We have seen each other grow out of adolescence and into young adulthood.

I’d like to think that I’ve been there every step of the way. From boy troubles to catty high school drama. I am terrified of being without you. But your friendship has helped shaped me out of the timid and incredibly shy girl I once was. It transformed me into the young woman that is finally spreading her wings and finally doing something that she has dreamed of doing for most of her life. You are one of the biggest reasons I’m finally branching out and working on being a better and more open-minded version of myself.

We will no longer be able to be physically there for each other everyday,

…But I promise to be right there with you through every good and bad hurdle you will endure over these next four years in heart and in spirit. Keep dreaming and growing. I look forward to seeing all that you will become.