Making Efforts in Friendships

Moving across the world changed many things in my life, one of them being friendships. As the distance grew, things started to get way more complicated than I expected. I moved from Pakistan to Canada after living there throughout my teenage years. This was a drastic change for me, and I am still new to everything and trying to get used to it. While settling in, one thing that I always worried about was companionship. Making new friends is hard enough but keeping in touch with your friends back home is another story. 

I’m blessed to have a group of seven friends. We met in Pakistan in the ninth grade. Fate brought us together since most of us joined almost at the same time and we bonded over being the “new girls.” We graduated together and went our separate ways, but keep in touch with each other. Some moved to different countries. We were all quite far apart.

Keeping in touch wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be at first. We got used to communicating online because of the pandemic, so we always caught up at the end of the day. Yet, as days went by it would become more and more difficult to contact each other. If we were to text each other, we had to keep time zones in mind. One friend lives in The Philippines. The time difference between The Philippines and Canada is nine hours! You could imagine how hard it is for us to communicate. One has to sacrifice their sleep to talk to the other, which is a hassle. In addition to that, all of us are busy with school. We barely have time for ourselves let alone for each other. My friends have midterms and finals at different times which is why we can never find a proper time to talk, when no one is occupied with studying. Speaking of school, since we’re in different parts of the world it’s difficult for them to understand the problems I face. Due to the differences in school systems, I face problems that they can’t relate to. For example, I told my friends about my struggle with finding volunteering opportunities and they could not understand the concept of it because they never had to volunteer in high school.

With the differences getting larger between us, my mind started to get clouded with the fear of losing my friends. I feared that I would lose contact with them because we could not relate to each other anymore, and I felt like we were too occupied in our own lives to talk to each other. Since it took so much effort to talk to one another, I thought that giving up on keeping in contact would be the easiest option. Apart from that, one of my biggest fears was my online friendships clashing with my real-life friendships. 

Making new friends while I was trying to keep my old friends was an extreme sport. I was so occupied by making sure our friendship didn’t fall apart that I couldn’t focus on making new friends.

As I went through this dilemma, I learned many lessons. I realized that I was worrying too much about losing contact with my friends. It’s hard to adapt to the sudden change of not talking to your friends whom you have known for many years. However, it’s important to understand that you don’t need to talk to them all the time to stay close. As you grow up it becomes apparent that people will come and go in your life. There is no need to hang onto friends that were only meant to be there for a little amount of time. It is a difficult lesson to learn, but it is what makes you stronger and a better person.

Moving has changed the way I think about friendships. Although it was hard to let some friends go, I was glad that I went through this experience. I grew as a person and understood the real meaning behind friendship. In the end, whoever wants to be in your life will make the effort to keep that bond with you despite the distance.