I Miss My Friends

I had the idyllic college experience.

My life felt like it belonged in one of the college glossies: late night coffee runs with my roommates, study abroad’s to foreign destinations, hours holed up in the film production center - it was a full 4 years of fun and friends who soon became my family.

My friends were my life. I ate breakfast, lunch and dinner with them; we ran errands and bought groceries together. We laughed and made spontaneous runs to Diddy Rieses, and screamed and cried when finals season came around. They became family, even in a way that my family couldn’t (largely because I CHOSE to love this side.) While the classes I took were enriching and the college life exciting, what really made my college experience were the people that became my lifelong friends.

Then I graduated from college.

I moved an hour away, but assumed the F.R.I.E.N.D.S episode would continue. There would be drinks after work, and crashing at each others houses. There’d be parties and road trips - it’d be like college except with more alcohol and less homework.

However, there are no glossies for real life. No one gives you a brochure when you graduate from college, advertising all the wonderful experiences ahead of you. As a TV junkie, I expected to walk right into a F.R.I.E.N.D.S episode , but I hate to tell you - Hollywood lied.

Most nights I come home, make some kind of a mish-mash of dinner alone and watch TV before I go to bed. I’ll call my friends to try and make plans, but they always fall through. Someone had to work late, or needs the weekend to sleep. or it’s raining and the drive is just too far.

On a rare night I’ll have a 3-hour date with The Best - on the phone, eating our dinners 300 miles apart. The Best moved to Northern California at the end of summer, yet I feel like I’ve seen her more often than anyone who stayed down South.

We’ve talked a lot about the best friend problem - both of us displaced from the comfortable home of our college town. We’re grasping tightly to the best friends of our college years, repeating the mantra that we are friends for life. But how do those friendships continue when you’re 5 1/2 hours apart?

It’s time to start making new friends in my new post-college life. I’m lucky to have awesome co-workers that have frequented happy hour with me on more than one occasion. And I’ve joined in with them and their friends as well. But, being me, I’m shy and always worried that I’ll seem like the tag-along.

So what do you think?

What’s the best way to make new friends in a new town? Do F.R.I.E.N.D.S. episode friendships really exist? Is it silly to believe college-type friendships (and midnight coffee runs) can continue into adult life?