Your Growth Means Leaving People Behind

You are changing and the people around you aren’t and that creates distance that’s hard to talk about. They’re still who they always were and you are not who you were and now you don’t fit in the same ways you used to fit. The friendship that made sense is still there but it doesn’t feel like home anymore.

The conversations are getting harder. You want to talk about things they don’t care about. You’ve moved on from things they’re still focused on. You are interested in stuff they think is pointless. The gap between what matters to you and what matters to them is growing and you don’t know how to close it. You are trying to bridge it and they’re not even looking for the bridge.

It’s not their fault. It’s not your fault. People just grow differently and sometimes the growing takes them in different directions. Sometimes the friendship that made perfect sense at one point doesn’t make sense the same way anymore. You were both in the same place and now you are not and you can’t figure out if that’s temporary or permanent.

You miss them even though they’re still here. The version of them that understood you and matched you isn’t there anymore because you changed and they didn’t. You are a different size now and the friendship doesn’t fit the same way. It still exists but it’s different and the different is sad. You feel the distance even when you are sitting next to them.

The love is still there but it’s complicated now. You care about them but you don’t want to spend time with them the way you used to. You want to be around people who get the new version of you. You want friends who care about the things you care about now. That means you are going to have less time for the old friends and they’re going to notice that and it’s going to hurt them or it’s going to hurt you or it’s going to hurt both of you. Maybe all of you are going to hurt and there’s nothing that makes that okay.

You could try to stay small so the friendship stays the same. You could stop growing and changing so you match them still. But staying small to keep a friendship is its own kind of loss. It’s choosing them over yourself and that works for a while until it doesn’t. Until you start resenting them for holding you back or resenting yourself for staying stuck.

Some friendships survive the different growth. Some people can grow separately and still meet in the middle sometimes. Those are the rare ones. The ones where both people are willing to let the friendship be different and they’re okay with that. They don’t expect it to be what it was. They just accept what it is now.

Most friendships don’t survive the gap that growing creates. Most of them just get smaller until they’re more like acquaintances who have history than friends who actually know each other. You see them occasionally and it’s okay and you remember why you were friends and you also remember why you are not as close anymore. The history is nice but the present is distant.

The hard part is that you still care about them. You are not leaving because they’re bad. You are growing and the growing is taking you somewhere they’re not going. You are becoming someone they don’t know how to be friends with. That’s not a rejection of them. That’s just life happening to both of you at different speeds.

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