A meditation on friendship, transformation and the permission to move forward.

One of the quietest heartbreaks you will ever live through is outgrowing a friendship. Growing apart from someone you once shared inside jokes with, cry-laughed with on rooftops or texted hourly updates about your academic spiral feels wrong. It feels like you are being ungrateful for the moments you shared. However, you are allowed to evolve. Sometimes, evolution means you are no longer fluent in the language of a friendship that once made perfect sense. It is completely okay to go through these changes.

When we are younger, we are told that “real” friends last forever. That the ones who stood by you in grade school  deserve eternal loyalty, no matter how much you change or how little you still relate. It is an appealing idea, probably because it gives us a sense of security in a world that is constantly changing. However, friendships, like people, are not set in stone. They are like living, breathing things. Sometimes they reach their natural expiry date — with no betrayal necessary.

Outgrowing a friend doesn’t mean they were “toxic” — as a society, we really overuse that word. Not every mismatch is a red flag waving in the wind. Sometimes the people you outgrow are kind, supportive and funny. They might have once been your lifeline. They might have helped you through your worst semester, memorized your coffee order or known your Spotify Wrapped before you did. Despite all that, you can still outgrow them.

For us university students, school is a time warp. You arrive with a version of yourself built from your hometown, your high school, your teenage dreams. Fast forward and suddenly, you are reading philosophy at 2 a.m., having existential breakdowns over microwave dinners and slowly reassembling who you are. You start learning what you actually care about — not what your eleventh  self thought was cool. You unlearn old ideas and fall into new ones. In that swirling chaos of becoming, some friendships just do not make the jump.

There is guilt, of course. A specific kind of guilt that creeps in when you realize you are not texting back as fast. You are not laughing at the same things. You are not reaching for them the way you used to. Eventually coming to the realization that you have both become people who no longer orbit the same sun.

What no one tells you is that letting that go is a form of love, as it is love without possession. It is recognizing that the friendship mattered, but not in the same way anymore. There is a somewhat grief that comes with this realization, but clarity supersedes it. You do not have to stay stitched to someone just because you shared a season of your life with them. Not all main characters stay for the entire story. Some only belong in certain chapters. That does not make them less important, it just makes them finite.

We are socialized to believe that cutting ties, or letting them fade, is inherently cruel. That you owe people permanence. However, the truth is, you owe yourself honesty. If a friendship no longer brings you joy, support, or meaning — if it feels like a performance instead of a connection — then choosing distance is not selfish. It is respectful and it allows both of you to grow without pretending.

Sometimes you will be the one who drifts first. Sometimes, the aching feeling of becoming a ghost in someone else’s life can overtake you. You will wonder if you should reach back, apologize for changing or try to rewind. Maybe some friendships deserve revival. Other times, however, you will realize that change is not something you need to apologize for. It is something you need to honor.

Letting go does not mean erasing the memories. You are allowed to remember them fondly, and there is no need to turn every former friend into a cautionary tale. You can just let them be part of your story without needing them in your present.

Don’t get me wrong — some friendships do last. Some friends grow alongside you, evolve with you, become mirrors that reflect both who you were and who you are becoming. Those friendships are magic. However, even magic requires space, trust and flexibility. Not everyone you care about will offer that, want it or even understand why you’re changing in the first place.

Consider this to be your permission slip, folded and passed to you by me under the cafeteria table of adulthood. You are allowed to change and move on, and that does not make you a bad person for growing. You are just a person in motion, which can be messy, but it is also necessary. There is no need to mourn friendships like they were failures but instead honor them like they were lessons.

Letting them go with grace will make it easier to let yourself keep going. It is crucial to keep in mind that there are more people ahead in your journey that you can build friendships with. Ones who match your current chaos, who understand your weird little niche interests, who show up not because you were friends once — but because you are aligned now.