I don't want to be your BFF.
I don't have a problem with becoming your BFFRN Ñ best friend for right now Ñ but I'm actually pretty tired of taking on BFFs.
It seems like suddenly, everyone I know expects to be a long-term fixture in my life. With Facebook, instant messaging, cell phones, e-mail and texting, it has become impossible to lose touch, even with people you really want to fall out of contact with.
In our parents' generation, I feel like it was understood: After college, you would only stay in touch with a few people. The rest you would get Christmas cards from, if that.
Now, that guy you met once in the dining hall freshman year is still wishing you a happy birthday.
I'm not against loyalty or being a good friend. Trying to be a good friend is something I value highly. But what happened to valuing friendship as something we experience now, rather than something that is supposed to last eternally?
Looking back over the past 22 years of my life, I've had a lot of best friends: Jacqueline at age 2, Jane at age 4, Jacqueline again at 8, Theresa at 12.
Those girls were great friends at the time. We played Barbies and went to movies. They even forgave me when I broke their crayons after coloring too hard. But they're no longer a part of my life. Yet I don't look back at them with bitterness.
My friendships with people in high school and college were deeper than coloring and dolls. But even so, some of my friendships from high school didn't last past a few years. It wasn't anything explosive that ended those friendships. Sometimes, we just didn't have class together.
Since college, though, I've noticed a marked change. When friends graduate, they expect to talk and have as much interaction as they did when we lived in the same town, and are angry if we don't.
One girl I considered an acquaintance informed me that she had told her boyfriend to pick another weekend to come visit so she could come to my birthday party. It was nice, but a little off-putting.
Maybe that came with the arrival of Facebook, where friendship is quantifiable.
There's no gray area in being a Facebook friend; in what other realm can you literally deny someone's request for friendship? And unless you make an executive decision to end it, Facebook friendship is forever.
But real friendship is completely different than being friends on a social network.
Friendships change. That's part of the nature of life. Relationships can't be judged by a wall-to-wall or frequency of texting.
I don't think I'm a bad person or a bad friend for falling out of touch. I make an effort to stay in touch with those who have been there for me over the years.
Honestly, though, if I worked with you one semester or took one lab with you, I have enough people in my life who care about me and whom I care for. Friendship is too emotionally demanding to dole out to everyone as an unlimited time offer.
We should enjoy friendship as it happens. Having dinner, studying or going out are the benefits we experience in the present, and we can overlook those by worrying about whether we'll still be talking to the same people in a few years.
Lifelong friendship is an incredibly valuable thing. Not every friendship will be like that, despite what Facebook would have you believe.
Hilary Lehman is a journalism senior. Her column appears on Wednesdays.
