Western Oregon Journal

When you’re in high school, you feel a sense of safety, like you’re invincible, like you can do anything, like the friends that you have will stay the same forever. In a way, high school is almost like the binding ribbon of naïveté; even if you walk on the wild side, there’s still an entire world that you aren’t introduced to until you cut that protective ribbon and graduate.

When you’re in high school, summer break is finite; the friends that you leave behind always come back the following fall, and even if you didn’t see them, you know that two months apart is not the end of the world.

In movies and television, high school is portrayed as the pinnacle of youth, with distressed beauties trying to find the perfect date for prom or being kissed for the first time. What most films or sitcoms don’t deal with, however, is saying goodbye at graduation, and the aftermath.

I met my best friend when I was a freshman in high school. Zemie was hands-down the coolest person I had ever met. She was smart, artistic and listened to David Bowie and Janet Jackson. Once introduced, we were pretty much inseparable.

The crucial high school years went by and our friendship became solidified with movie nights, gripe sessions, laughing and gorging ourselves with popcorn and ice cream. We took the same classes; we hung out after school and on the weekends, too. During the summer, we went camping, saw each other almost every day and if not together, talked on the phone. One might say that we were joined at the hip.

But like they say, all good things must come to an end, and in 2003, Zemie and I graduated high school. The past four years had been constantly her and me and me and her. Now, we weren’t even going to go to the same school. In August, Zemie would be making her way down to California while I would begin at Western in September.

I remember the last night I saw her—I gave her a hug and almost started to cry. But what do you say? I’m going to miss you? Goodbye? Such simple words don’t seem to be enough to encompass four years of best-friendship. I turned into the darkness, got into my car and drove off.

I can’t say that the following few months were easy—anyone thrust into a new atmosphere would attest to that. Here I was, at a college ten times the size of my small high school, living with people I had yet to meet and without Zemie by my side.

But I survived until Thanksgiving. And then I survived until Christmas. I survived until spring break, and I survived until summer. I survived, thrived and did it all in one piece.

And even though Zemie wasn’t by my side at every waking moment, she still played an integral part in my first year at college. She was still the person that I called about boy advice, she was still the person I complained to about homework and she was still my best friend.

Despite the fact that she returned to Portland with her hair a different color, and both of our ideas about the world had changed, we were still friends at the end of the year. After the first year, I knew that nothing would break our bond—distance was only a minor barrier to our relationship.

After high school, you are given the option to either stay in touch with your friends or not. It’s hard to realize that in some instances that last summer vacation is not finite when it comes to the ones you love. But remember that there are many ways to stay in touch. If you hate the phone, stay connected through email or instant messaging. Start a live journal to keep your friends updated. Or even try the old-fashioned pen-paper-envelope-stamp method. But it’s not always your friends’ responsibility to keep the ball rolling—it’s also yours.

As winter break came to a close for both Zemie and me, it was time to once again say our goodbyes. Of course it is not easy, but now I can live a few weeks without even talking to Zemie; I know that we’re still friends even though she’s not here. And I know that we can survive without each other. But for now, I don’t want to know what it would be like to try.

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