Growing up pains

Growing up changes relationships, especially friendships.

Been musing over it for quite some time yet I never seemed to find a satisfactory conclusion nor a resolution. I noticed the changes ever since I stepped into Uni, my group of close friends didn’t meet as much as when we were in JC. Perhaps then we were in the same class, we saw each other everyday. Yet in Uni, even when we saw each other in class, it wasn’t like before. We had so many things in front of us to bother about and grades was all on their our minds. Well, I could throw those aside for awhile, school was just school. Lunch was hurried, time was spent in the library mugging. The care-free life was gone. The time to smell the roses was gone?

I began to see less and less of them and others.

Paddle on 2 years later, I have started working and contact became really minimal. The number of times we meet in a year are like maybe the number of fingers you have on one hand or two. And when we meet, we tend to “catch up” by summarizing our lives in one or two hours meal we have together. A summary of some sentences. Or there are some of my friends who busy themselves with so much activities that when I “book” them one to two weeks in advance, they are unavailable. No point booking them one month in advance either, cos they won’t be free suddenly too.

Is it true that as people grow older, they keep less friends? Is it just girls? Guys can bond over a soccer game WITHOUT talking or even if they have not seen each other in years. It seems like heart-to-heart talks don’t exist anymore when you grow older and other things occupy your time and attention or is it one have built up a wall so much so to protect oneself such that others cant get in.

Or maybe it’s me that no one wants to open up to me. Or have a heart-to-heart talk with me anymore. It seems difficult to get people to meet and sometimes we are like strangers. Yet I don’t think I have changed much, just still as naïve.

I guess I have learnt to manage my own feelings and solve my own problems internally and ultimately be independent.