They say change is necessary...

“You've changed so much. I guess that's what happens. I wish you knew how much you changed me. I wonder if I changed you, if your life is different because of me. Because mine's different. My God, you taught me so much, and now we don't even talk to each other. I guess that's what happens.”

Change. The word has been ALL over the place these past few months because of the elections. But I’m talking about personal change. People changing. Places changing. Jobs. Apartments. Lifestyles. Living in college was easy. Zero responsibility beyond being sure you got your homework done. If you accidentally over slept and missed class, no big deal. No bills. No nothing.

Now that college is over, its all responsibility. Bills. Rent. Being sure I have enough money to pay for those things. Being sure I get up on time to get to work on time. Being sure they kids that I’m teaching are learning and they are happy. I don’t have a family or kids or anything but I have friends I like to stay close to even if we are far in distance. I’m always trying to be sure to remember everyone, keep in touch with everyone. As time goes on and I’m apart from more and more people, I’m just realizing I’m changing, they are changing. How will our personal changes affect our friendships? What happens next? Will we change too much and not stay as close?

I think I’m trying to be good at growing up (even if I’m not happy about it) and I’m trying to take responsibility for everything that I do. I could easily just go through the motions of my job, but I want to go above and beyond and really make a positive difference in the company that I work for. This is not who I was merely 6 months ago. I loved the parties and the no responsibility and trust me, I was really living the life. But don’t get me wrong I still love partying and I’m not a fan of responsibility but I’m doing what I gotta do to get by right now.

I sometimes think I’m handling it well. I’ve changed, but I’m staying true to who I am at the same time. I haven’t made any crazy changes in my life and I haven’t started doing things I never would have done a few months ago. And as I sit here thinking about all the people that have come into my life in the past years (even the past months) I can easily think of ways that each person has effected me, changed me, made me to be a better person, brought out the best in me, brought out the worst in me, made me happy, made me sad, made me re-think my life and what I’ve done with it thus far.

I don’t really know where this is all coming from today, but I sit here with only my thoughts and think about how everyone I know has changed since college, whether college ended for them in May with me or it ended 4 years ago. Some for the better and some for the worst. I think some people have just made choices about growing up or not. Some have decided to linger on the past (and maybe I’m doing a bit of that too) and some have decided to go the other way, completely shocking everyone with what they are doing. I expected this sort of this would happen, but I guess I never truly believed it until today. Sometimes I think, it’s not the change that’s shocking, it’s who is changing and how they are changing that is shocking to me.

“Even though we've changed and we're all finding our own place in the world, we all know that when the tears fall or the smile spreads across our face, we'll come to each other because no matter where this crazy world takes us, nothing will ever change so much to the point where we're not all still friends.”

…Right?

*ALWAYS BELIEVE*