11.06.25 childhood friends
frontal lobe development revelations series: lessons at 26 #1
Tuesday 11th June 12:09AM
I have had this one specific group of friends since I was five. Growing up in the largest populated city in a small country means there are only 3 possible primary schools, 3 intermediate schools and, 3 high schools, and one university in your area to pick from.
Something about childhood friends is that it’s almost more like family than actual friends. We know each other so well and have spent so much time living inside each others pockets that we forget to give each other the respect that friends should. Sometimes it feels like the version they see of me is still the 15 year old one. Or maybe they also do the thing that I do— pick which age they liked me the best and compare and scrutinise everything I do to that standard. Maybe they miss when I was more carefree and willing to go along with things, and I miss when they were more grounded and wise for their age and had all the answers. We know all of each other’s short comings, embarrassing moment. We keep tabs on the different versions of ourselves that we became, rating how far away from “their authentic self” each version is.
Now I’ve moved to a new city and for the first time, I am completely removed from that group of friends. All these weird, strange suppressed feelings that I never said out loud have started to come to the surface.
The friend’s I’ve made actively and sought out in adulthood, in this new city are ones that share my hobbies, share the same values and perspectives on life. They see me for who I am at this moment and who I am striving to be. I see them for who they are in this moment and who they are striving to be. Mentions of our past selves only come up in retrospective stories about lessons learned.
Last weekend I went on a girls road trip that was so fulfilling. There’s a couple times every year where I have a new pivotable revelation about my life and relationships. This road trip has been one of them. Everyone had worked in hospitality and retail before so we were cooking and cleaning like line chefs. For the first time, I wasn’t cleaning up after people, waiting 1 hour for someone to finish taking a shower, or waiting 2 hours for someone to finish getting ready in the morning, watching some sit around doing nothing while others do everything.
I had never felt so loved and taken care of on a road trip before, despite how the countless trips I have been on with my childhood friends.
I called my mum today and I was finally able to say out loud something that I had thought for a long but never wanted to put out in the world. Sometimes, I feel like my childhood friends don’t take me seriously. But that’s not their fault either, I have always been loud, unserious, unfazed by everything, not by the mud on my knees and hair, eating dropped fruit off the school pavement or by my subpar grades. But deep down, I am a prideful, deeply caring and sensitive person, sometimes to my detriment. How are they supposed to know how I much I care about my pride if I never express it? Actually I take that back, they know me well enough to know this about me, we’ve had 15 years of 4am conservations about it before.
Ok so maybe they have taken advantage of this a little bit.
In our call, my mum mentioned one incident that has always stuck in her mind.
In 2017, we all went back to China together with my mum. We took a night bus from the airport into the city. Everyone got off the bus first, took out their own luggage from under the bus and didn’t bother to get mine. My mum and I were the last to get off, and as soon as we got off the bus, it was on its way. My mum asked if they got my luggage, they looked around apologetically but I could tell they didn’t feel remorse or much responsibility. My mum and I grabbed a taxi and sped off after the bus. Retrospectively, it was after that trip that I started branching out my uni social circles.
My mum had mentioned this incident before in previous conversation, but it wasn’t until this recent road trip, that I was finally able to admit to myself that my new friends and current close friends would never let something like that happen.
According to my mum, I often give too much love to people, and then when I realise that it’s not balanced, it’s immediately closed gates from then on.
I would never want to sound ungrateful for the long life friendships I’ve had. I think I’m privileged to have experienced so many different types of friendships in my life, especially friendships that have lasted over two decades and feel more like family. My childhood friends and I will be turning 27 this year. I’m not sure if this revelation is something I would ever talk to them about, but I do feel that as we all get older, we develop more grace for one another. We’ve been tied at the hips long enough so I guess right now is the time for us to figure out who we are without each other.
They’re probably doing the same thing as me right now, comparing their new friendships to ours, which aspects we are more like family, cousins, or friends, where we got complacent, discovering old memories that they love and resent and who we do and don’t want to be to each other.
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I’m so bad at endings my posts. Ugh. But I wanted to end it on a positive note.
This is actually a really personal post so I feel very insecure about posting this. This is the one time I hope this gets no views!
But I’ll probably post more life revelation stuff like this more often. Hehe!
See y’all soon
CC xx