After graduating from high school in 2006, I will filled with a lot of emotions. I spent four years in college, graduated at the beginning of May, and am now filled with a different set of emotions. Graduation, for me, was not filled with last memories with friends or late-night celebrating in bars. I took a few photos with my family and my fiancé's family and went home to have a small party with them. I haven't seen or heard from my friends since I graduated.

I know that a lot of people say that your college friends remain some of your closest companions for life. It's different than graduating from high school because you became an adult with them. You tried your first beer with them and got busted for it with them. You decided when to skip class and when not to with them (you have to have someone to spend time with when you're not in class, after all). All of your choices revolve around academics and just having fun.

What I came to realize going into my last year of college is that my friends were all about fun for the most part, and I chose my friends over my school work many times. This hurt me hard twice, and I most definitely suffered for it. The only thing I have to show for those relationships now is a second-thought photo of us from before our last concert together, no images of us in cap and gown on the day of graduation, and no final memories worth remembering.

Well, I do have a few memories. I have a memory of putting on a senior voice recital in which my "friends" didn't show up but decided to go to the spring concert instead. The only reason I know where they were is because I saw all three of them walking away from it together as I drove home after my recital. My matron of honor threw me a bridal shower the Saturday before graduation with a dress try-on/fitting before for the bridesmaids. Only my sisters, my matron of honor, and my mother showed up. The one person I counted on to be there was so wasted from the night before that she couldn't answer my phone or my younger sister's when they came to pick her up the next morning. She didn't even show up to my bridal shower either.

It hurts me a great deal to feel this now, after my graduation, especially after I had thought I was done being hurt by it during graduation. I can't trust my friends to respect me enough to not get so drunk that they cannot show up to an obligation they said they were going to be at, to call me and ask how I am and what I'm doing or invite me out for drinks instead of only contacting me when they realize that I have something of theirs that they want back, to talk about my engagement behind my back instead of being happy for me, complaining about how the date for my wedding is two days before another wedding they are planning on being invited to...

I can forgive my friends for the decisions they have made that have hurt me, but I cannot forgive myself for letting them treat me like this.

I love my friends, but really?