Friendships Come and Go but the Love Still Lingers

My cousin has a post up that has be bothering my head since I first saw it towards the beginning of the month. She mentions that if she's ever loved you for a second she'll love you forever.

It's not that I don't believe that, it's just that I don't think she and I would see eye-to-eye on how to show friends that love. All the various friends I've had over the years, the ones that were there at the time I needed them, but that I've not kept in touch with, seem to come to my mind when I read that. It's not that I don't still care for these friends. If I saw them, I would definitely greet them warmly and ask them about how they are and truly care to know the answer.

It's just that I understand how you don't always need to keep the same people as friends for the rest of your life. You aren't always going to be as close to those people as you once were. Sometimes, you need the friend for a time and it's time to let each other go. It's not that you stop caring, it's just that you are in different stages in life. Sometimes those stages just don't allow your former closeness to remain.

The hardest lesson I learned after Ace and I married was that I was no longer the same person with the same concerns as I had been 6 months earlier when I was just engaged. The people I had spent 3 or 4 years being close friends with weren't at the point that they could see things the same way I was now seeing them, because they didn't have a spouse whose input was just as important as their own when making decisions. It hurt to find that these people who I thought I'd be friends with for at least a while longer were people I could no longer fully relate to. And while we could use a shorthand for inside jokes, it wasn't really going to be the same. It was time to start making new friends with people in the same stage of life I was now in.

I'd love to know that all those friends are happy, but the past friendships, no matter how near and dear to my heart, weren't enough to make me stay in contact. I realized that they were important to me, but they were in my past. Still loved, memories still cherished, but the relationships times had passed.