It's a funny thing about home friends. They are the people I was friends with in school. I'm not sure I'd be friends with many of them if we were to meet now, but I am friends with them. They're people I grew up with, had my first fights with, had my first drinks with. They were there for so many firsts, and they know me really well. Or they did, the more I live away from them the more we seem like strangers, at least for the first few hours. Then something clicks and it's back to when we were fifteen or sixteen years old.
All of my home friends stayed in Spain to study for their degrees. Most of them stayed within a 3 hour radius from my home town (car distance). Most of them can come back home for the weekend, or for a birthday, or if they miss home. In that, I'm the odd one out. I'm the only one they don't see for months at a time, the one that's out of the loop, the one who was a friend, but who it's harder to remain friends with, because, let's be honest, it's hard to keep friendships through Facebook. There's good will and you try, but it's not the same.
Sometimes I think I should come back. Just come back and go back to studying close to home and having my home friends and building a life and a network of friends based on constancy. Then I realize I could never do this. I got bored and I'd get bored again. Maybe not in a year, but in a couple of years. I'd become bored of seeing the same people with the same narrow minds. Because as much as I love my home friends they're not readers, they're not (in general) ambitious, they don't like to travel. I love them, because I grew up with them, because I've taken care of them and they've taken care of me. Because they're interesting people, because I could talk to them for hours. When I was sixteen. Now it's just awkward.
We all grow up, and change, and we move. That we're not who we were when we were teenagers. I like being a grown-up, and to a certain extent I like my grown-up life. Do I miss living at home and doing the same thing every weekend and having a sort of predictable life? Yes. No doubt. Would I go back to it? Yes, in a second. Would I stay? No way. I'd probably get bored in a couple of years and leave.
Now I know this. I know that my friends are people I can talk to for hours, and love hanging out with, and who'll help me out. I hope we'll be friends for years to come, but I also know that this might change, and that that's not necessarily a bad thing. In a sense it makes me more free. I know that in a couple of years' time we might all be in different countries around the world, and as much as I don't like this now, I know it will happen, and we'll survive it. And maybe friendships will fade, or become just getting along, but most of the friends I have now will probably be happy to have a drink with me if I'm int their neighbourhood. And it will be awkward for the first few hours, but then we'll be around twenty again and it won't matter.
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