Life Changes

I was watching "Boy Meets World" today (yes, the mid-90's sitcom) and it got me thinking.


Cory and Topanga were getting married and Shawn was having a hard time coping with their marriage.  At first, I thought it was because he was jealous.  It turns out, however, that Shawn was upset because he knew that he and Cory were not going to be best friends anymore because Cory was marrying his new best friend.


I started thinking about my own life and my own friends.  In August of 2008, I had several friends, both single and married.  I then moved away to teach in another state and be with Doug.  When I moved, although I still talked to my friends, it was clear things had changed.


See, when I lived in Florida, I was the single girl and I had nothing tying me down.  I could just get up and go where ever, whenever.  Just a short time later, I was the married girl.  I now had a husband to confer with and figure into my plans.  Very shortly after I was the married girl, I was then a mom.  I now had to include a husband and a baby into my plans. 


For my friends back home, especially the single ones, it seemed like in less than two years, we went from having a lot in common to really having nothing in common.


Doug is also finding that friends from college that were really good friends of his, he doesn't talk to except very occasionally.  I've tried telling him, that a) we live about 10 hours away from where he went to college, where a lot of people still live b) some of his friends are single, some are married, but only one of his friends has a child and that baby is only 5 days old.  Doug's life and his friends' lives are different than they were 3 years ago.  I'm afraid that even if we moved back to the area he went to college, he would find himself no longer part of the "group".  Oh sure, his friends may talk to him more often, but they've all forged new friendships in his absence.  It's kind of like this situation.


Even my little brother has learned this sad lesson.  After Thanksgiving, he and his wife went back to the small town we grew up in.  They wanted to see all their friends that they left behind just 18 months earlier.  They very quickly found out that the people in our small town were either in college, which neither my brother nor his wife are, or the friends were slackers sitting around doing nothing with their lives, which my brother's not.  Also, none of their friends are married.  With my brother already completing Army training and being slightly more worldly than a typical 20 year old and he being married, there wasn't a whole lot that the "old" friends had in common with him anymore.


I think that the great thing about Facebook, among the many not-so-good things, is that you can stay in touch with people you grew up with or knew.  I am friends with people on FB that I wasn't friends with in high school or in my old town.  These people and I have things in common now though.  We both have children or we're both stay-at-home moms or we both became teachers, etc.


People say 'you can't go home'.  I think that this statement is true if you expect everything to be the same as when you left.  If you are open-minded and realize that everyone's life changes, moves on with or without your presence, you can go home again, if only for a short while.