I basically had a core group of friends from eight grade to junior year, but the end of junior year my friends were really awful to me and kind of abandoned me because a member of my family got really sick and I was in a really bad place and depressed and “too difficult to be around,” which really blindsided me tbh. Now it’s senior year and we’ve made up and are working on becoming friends again, and while I’m willing to let things go for now, for obvious reasons I don’t plan on staying in touch with them after graduation.
My question is will people find this weird or off putting? I know that a year or two after graduating high school most people grow apart from the majority of their high school friends, but frankly I’m not sure if I see myself talking to them at all as soon as I leave for college. I don’t want to have to eventually like, catch people up on all the high school drama so they don’t draw false conclusions about why I didn’t seem to have any close friends. I’m really looking forward to having a fresh start, but I’m worried that eventually someone’s going to ask something not knowing that it has a rather personal answer. Do people talk about their high school experience a lot for the first few months of freshman year, or would you say that the majority of people are in similar positions and want to put all that behind them? Am I worrying for nothing?
Nobody at college will care. Your friends will…someone from my friend group went radio-silent when we left for college and I don’t think we’ll ever be that close again.
Nope, no one cares! College is a clean slate. I don’t keep in touch with a single person from high school, and it’s no biggie. College is where you’ll make your life long friends.
First I wonder why you would spend senior year of high school trying to heal multiple relationships but not really, since you have decided in September that none of these people are worth talking to after graduation. Why not make new friends? Or pull out whoever you think is nicest and spend more time with them one-on-one and less in this HS “group”.
Second, maybe you do need to forgive. Maybe the “too difficult to be around” was an honest attempt at explaining that you could not use them as your personal therapist, being completely wrapped up in yourself. Maybe they are obnoxious and you need to forgive yourself or demand to be treated better. You should maybe explore this with one of them, again, the group dynamics aren’t working for you anymore, so stop hanging out and pretending it is all OK if you truly sincerely don’t think it is.
Third, while it tempting to just disappear, if your parents are not moving and you are not going to a local college, you want someone to hang out with next summer. Pick one of the two options above and run with it.
It’s a bit more complicated than that. They’ve admitted that they weren’t good friends (and I never used them as my personal therapists, I’m not one to talk about my feelings and they made no attempt at being a support system anyways). We’re working on our friendships because we’ve spent such a significant portion of our lives together and it’s our senior year, and I don’t want to graduate with unresolved issues because like you said, we’re bound to run into each other. Maybe by graduation things will heal and we will stay in touch. I really do appreciate your perspective on things, since I’m in high school and my world’s sort of limited to that at the moment, but the question wasn’t about how I should handle my social life. It was to ease my anxieties about how I’ll be perceived in college and to what extent my high school experiences will follow me, that’s all.
I think you should just wait and let things evolve.
These relationships are important-- these are the people who have been your friends since 8th grade. Relationships aren’t – or shouldn’t be-- disposable.
It’s the first week of October. You’re working on those relationships now-- great. Let them evolve. Don’t dump all your friends in June simply because you’ll no longer be attending classes with them in September.
Will your new college friends care that you don’t have any high school friends? I think it depends on who you meet and what their experiences have been. You might just find that you don’t make any close friends right away and that you want to reach out to those old high school friends. You might find that you don’t love your new school, and want to transfer back to a local school. Or you may find that you and your HS friends all move on to different people.
Just drop them and never contact them again. I did and I don’t regret it. I have never seen or spoken to again anyone I went to school with aged 11-16 (I then went to a different school). Why over analyse all this drama? Just leave them behind for good. Not worth one second of your time.