Latest / The Friendship Room: Honest Conversations About Friends & Connection / The Quiet Grief of Outgrowing a College Roommate | The Friendship Room
Transcript
- There is a specific kind of silence that settles into an apartment after the boxes are gone, and it’s heavier than you ever expected it to be. It’s not just about missing the person; it’s about mourning the version of yourself that only existed in that shared space. I want you to close your eyes for just a moment and picture your old college room. Not the one you live in now, with its sensible furniture and quiet corners, but the one from years ago. The one with the flickering fluorescent light that buzzed like an angry hornet. The one where the floorboards squeaked in three specific spots, and where you both left clothes on chairs for weeks because laundry felt like a distant concept. Remember how loud that room was? Even when you were alone, it felt populated by the ghost of your roommate’s habits. Her perfume lingering on the doorframe. The way she chewed gum loudly while studying. The shared jokes that meant nothing to anyone else but everything to you two. Now imagine that room empty. Really empty. The bed frames are gone. The posters are peeled off the walls, leaving those sticky, white squares that no amount of scrubbing can fully remove. And I want you to think about the feeling in your chest right now. Is it relief? Freedom? Or is there a small, tight ache behind your ribs that you’ve been ignoring because it feels ungrateful? Because let’s be honest, Evelyn doesn’t do ungrateful here. We’re going to sit with that ache. Let’s sit with that for a second. That ache is real. It’s valid. And it’s named outgrowing. We grow up believing that the friends we make in our early twenties are forever. They’re the ones who see us at our most vulnerable, our most chaotic, our most unpolished. They know about the panic attacks before finals. They know which brand of cereal makes you sick. They know the exact shade of blue you paint your toenails when you’re trying to feel normal. Society tells us these bonds are sacred, unbreakable, etched in stone. But life has a funny way of eroding stone. It doesn’t happen with a dramatic fight or a betrayal. It happens in the quiet spaces between texts. It happens when you realize you haven’t called each other in three months, and neither of you feels the urgency to pick up the phone. And this is where the guilt creeps in. You start wondering if you’re failing the friendship. If you’re being selfish for changing. But here’s the truth that nobody talks about: growth is inherently isolating. When you change, the person who knew the old you loses their map. They don’t know where to find you anymore. And you don’t know where to find them. It’s not that you don’t care. It’s that you’re speaking different languages now. One of you is talking about mortgages and menopause and midlife crises. The other is still talking about career ladders and dating apps and finding yourself. Neither conversation is wrong. But they don’t fit together anymore. This brings me to a question I’ve been turning over lately. What does loyalty look like on a Tuesday? When you’re tired, and they’re busy, and the connection feels thin? For years, I thought loyalty meant showing up. It meant answering the phone at 2 AM. It meant remembering birthdays even when you forgot your own PIN number. But as I’ve gotten older, and as my friendships have shifted, I’ve realized that loyalty might just mean letting go gracefully. It means acknowledging that the chapter is closed without slamming the book shut. Think about the last time you saw that roommate. Did you hug too long? Did you try too hard to recreate the magic of the past? Did you talk about old times because talking about the present felt too risky? I did that for years. I clung to the nostalgia because the present felt fragile. But clinging to the past doesn’t keep the friendship alive. It keeps it in a museum. Beautiful to look at, but dead inside. Real friendship requires breath. It requires new air. And if there’s no new air, the relationship suffocates. It’s okay to admit that. It’s okay to say, 'I loved who we were, but I’m not sure who we are now.' That’s not failure. That’s honesty. And honesty is the only thing that can save a bond from becoming a memory. Let me ask you something uncomfortable. Tell me more about the cost of staying static. Why do we fear drifting so much? Is it because we’re afraid of being forgotten? Or is it because we’re afraid of facing ourselves without that mirror? Your college roommate was a witness to your transformation. Without her, you lose that external validation of how far you’ve come. That’s scary. It’s lonely. And it’s necessary. I remember a friend of mine, Sarah. She had a roommate from college whom she’d seen every week for ten years. When Sarah got promoted, she moved across the country. She expected the calls to stop. She braced herself for the heartbreak. But instead, the calls changed. They became shorter. More functional. 'How’s work?' 'How’s the house?' 'See you soon.' And at first, Sarah mourned it. She thought she’d lost her sister. But then she started seeing the pattern. She realized that Sarah wasn’t losing her friend. She was gaining a new dynamic. A respectful distance. A love that didn’t need constant proximity to survive. It was quieter, yes. But it was also deeper. Less performative. More real. And that’s what outgrowing can offer. It can strip away the performance. It can leave only what’s true. So how do we honor the ghosts without letting them haunt us? How do we acknowledge the grief without drowning in it? Start by naming it. Say out loud, 'I miss her.' Say, 'I miss us.' Don’t apologize for the sadness. Sadness is just love with nowhere to go. Give it a place to land. Write a letter you’ll never send. Delete the photos that hurt too much to look at. Create a ritual of release. Maybe it’s donating the leftover books you bought together. Maybe it’s simply sitting in your current home and thanking the past for teaching you how to be alone. And then, gently, turn toward the present. Look at the people around you now. Who sees you today? Who knows the new you? Who doesn’t need you to be the girl who stayed up all night drinking cheap wine? These are your people now. They might not have the history. They might not have the shorthand. But they have the choice. And that choice is worth more than any shared past. Don’t undervalue the new connections because they’re unfamiliar. Familiarity isn’t always safety. Sometimes it’s stagnation. Sometimes it’s a comfort zone that’s slowly becoming a cage. Step out of the cage. Breathe the new air. It might be thin at first. But it’s yours. Here’s my gentle challenge to you this week. Identify one friendship that feels heavy. Not toxic, just heavy. The one where you’re carrying the weight of the history, and they’re just riding along. Where you’re doing all the emotional labor to keep the flame alive. Put down the weight. Just for a day. See what happens. Do they notice? Do they reach out? Or do they let the flame go out? If they let it go out, it wasn’t your job to reignite it. It was their choice. And maybe, just maybe, it’s time to accept that some friendships are seasons. Beautiful, intense, transformative seasons. But they end. And ending doesn’t mean it wasn’t good. It means it was complete. You get to decide what comes next. You get to build a new room. One with better lighting. One where the floorboards don’t squeak. One where you can breathe. It won’t be perfect. It will be messy. It will be uncertain. But it will be alive. And that’s enough. That’s more than enough. You don’t need to hold onto the past to prove you mattered. You just need to trust that you still do. Right here. Right now. With the people who choose to stay. Not because they have to. But because they want to. I’m Evelyn Frazier. Thank you for letting me into your quiet moments. Until next time, be gentle with your heart. And remember, it’s okay to outgrow things. It’s how we grow ourselves. Bye for now.