The term “squad” is used by thousands of teens and young adults like myself every day, to recognize the small group of people you have chosen to be friends with and have chosen to share many experiences and memories with, regardless if they are good or bad. It is a word that encompasses what many people seek out in a friendship in modern times, a person or a group of people who will always be there for you and will always have your back.
It is amazing that the recent generation has built such a system to uphold the friendships and deep bonds they have made with such a variety of different people and to celebrate our differences while being together as one. But, along with the celebration of friendship and platonic love between one another comes room for pressure and certain expectations to bloom within the very standard we have created. It is an epidemic that is slowly spreading and filtering down to every friendship group or clique regardless of popularity or social hierarchy.
The standard our generation has set for the friendships we make is a good thing, but it allows for misinterpretation about what a ‘squad’ truly is and what it should mean to people. It allows for people to believe that in order to fulfill the criteria of a close-knit group of friends, you have to constantly be aware of everything that is circulating the group and constantly be surrounded by those people. It breeds a culture of only devoting your time and energy into specific friendships with people that you think will benefit you in some way, be that emotionally or physically, rather than making friendships with a variety of people.
Pop culture has a constant running commentary of ‘cliques’ in teenage life, you only need to take one look at the myriad of ‘coming of age’ films to recognize that. Now, the social ranking and divide may not be as black and white as it is portrayed to be in some films or tv shows, a la Mean Girls, but it definitely similar even today and some may say this divide between friendship groups is only continuing to widen. The terms ‘squad’ and ‘clique’ are similar in many ways and yet people still view them as two separate issues when they are not.
Speaking from personal experience, the loss of a friendship group is one that is hard to articulate. It is both sad and eye-opening. I realized after stepping back from the very friendship group I hailed to be the best friends of my entire life, that I devoted so much of my time into forcing the friendships to work rather than making new friends. I did this all the while not realizing that while I was changing as a person, the people I was closest to were moving in the opposite direction from where I was going.
It took me a while to overcome and realize the fact that change is a natural progression of life, and my friends were going to change with that. I needed to realize sooner that as I wanted to go in one direction and my friends wanted to go in another, and that we were pulling each other in all different directions.
There are some people in life who will go on the path you decide to go on, and there are others who will go completely in the opposite direction, and that is okay.
It is okay that you will naturally drift apart from one another, and makes the friendships that do last through thick and thin all the more special and meaningful.
We need to stop adding to the stereotype that the friends you make while at school are the only ones you will have throughout your life and you constantly need to have a ride or die mindset in regards to your closest friends because it simply isn’t true. This mindset of ‘ride or die friendships’ damages relationships as it puts pressure on all parties to placate to every whim that the other person wants the other to do or every opinion that the other person has, which creates a hivemind of people who follow each other about everything which reduces individuality. If there is anyone out there who has gone through or is currently going through a period of losing your friend(s), know that it is an experience that everyone goes through at some stage in life and that it is okay to feel the feelings you are naturally going to experience during this time.
