As people change, friendships can struggle

By Mariah Davis and Mariah Davis

Mariah Thesing, 7, was assigned to sit next to Ashley Bohn in second grade. They started talking and became best friends right away. When asked how long they’ll be friends, Mariah said, “I don’t know – forever!”

If you’d asked me the same question in fourth grade about my best friend Laura, I would have said the same thing.

We met in fourth grade at Family Academy, a charter school in Roseville that’s now closed. Our school didn’t have a gym, so we went to a nearby YMCA for gym class. I sat next to Laura on the bus ride over. We introduced ourselves and started talking and we became best friends.

Laura and I played with each other every recess and were in all the same clubs and after-school programs. In sixth grade, she transferred to North Heights Christian Academy, a private school. I convinced my parents to let me transfer to her school the next year.

We planned on going to college together, on going on road trips around the country, and traveling the world. We even planned on moving to Canada, where Laura was from, and raising our children together.

But all of those plans started to fade when Laura and I started high school. As kids, you’re certain friendship lasts forever, but once you grow up, things change, you change, and your friendship can as well.

Jojo Brown and Ana Lindeberg, both from Richfield, also met in elementary school when they were assigned to sit next to each other in class. Ana’s mother had taught her a simple phrase to make friends: “Will you be my friend?” Ana asked this of Jojo, and Jojo said yes. They became best friends and intended to stay that way forever.

Growing up, Ana and Jojo lived two miles away from each other, and went to school together. Jojo got into softball and basketball, while Ana was a black belt in karate. Ana was emotional and loud. Jojo was more stable, and reserved. But they felt that they really balanced each other out, JoJo said.

After High School, Ana started college at the University of St. Thomas, while Jojo went to Mexico on a mission trip. Ana took on the college-student role with new friends and studying. They started to change.

“Like I’d call Ana from Mexico and say ‘I was working all day today, what did you do?’ Ana’s response would be ‘Oh nothing, I just went to a party,” JoJo said.

This change happened for me and Laura when we went to different high schools. She went with all our other friends to an affiliated private Christian school, which my family couldn’t afford, while I went back to public school.

Even before we started school, our differences were starting to show. We went shopping one day with some of our other friends from our Christian school. I saw Hot Topic, a dark, punk-goth style store that plays heavy rock music inside, and I went inside to find something edgy to wear to school. My friends, on the other hand, sensed what they called demonic presence inside the store and were afraid to follow me inside. They ended up drawing sticks to decide who would go in and get me. Laura ended up dragging me out, and suggested we go to Ragstock instead.

I started making new friends at Mounds View High School. I started dressing in black and listening to secular rock music, which would have been taboo at my old school.

Then, my family moved to another city and it became harder and harder to see Laura or any of our other friends. Laura and I were drifting further and further apart. I would call but she’d be out with our other friends at a school event or with her clubs while I’d be home alone studying.

I was feeling really left out of our friendship, and felt that other girls from her high school were now taking my place. Nothing I did seemed to matter. I felt as if Laura didn’t really want to be friends with me anymore and I wasn’t getting any support with the new things in my life that I was experiencing.

She felt as if I wasn’t the same person anymore and she didn’t know who I was. She was concerned about the friends I was hanging around being a bad influence, and that I didn’t care about her or any of our other friends.

Finally, we both snapped, and in a series of angry e-mails our friendship ended.

Jojo and Ana have been drifting apart as time goes on. Ana is still focused on college and Jojo moved into Hamline House, an intentional community, or shared living situation for members of Third Way Church.

Jojo worries her and Ana’s friendship is very fragile, but she is determined to have the friendship remain in tact, and hopes they’ll become better friends as adults.

I hope JoJo and Ana do stay friends, but I know that it won’t be as easy as everyone expected it to be in elementary school. They can’t expect to have the same connection as they age as they did as children because they have had new experiences that have shaped their perspectives on life, the world, relationships, and themselves.

One day, I reached out to Laura on Facebook and sent her a friend request. I wondered what she would say. She accepted and sent me a message. “I don’t remember much of our little-to-no contact in the past few years. Are we friends? You want to be? I want to. I want to try,” she wrote.

In tears, I wrote back: “I’m willing to rebuild a friendship between us but we need to change things … I don’t think we can be best friends like we used to be or at least not yet, but if you’re willing we can work together to be friends again.”

Each friendship will have at least one period of hardship. That hardship may be as small as a disagreement on the playground on what to play, others may be as hard as a new personality replacing the friend you once knew, and you have to re-meet your best friend all over again.

If you have the patience and maturity to pull through it and embrace your friendship despite your differences, then I think it won’t end easily.