If you know me, you know I am horribly lazy when it comes to communicating.

I rarely answer my cell phone, text messages take hours to return, and unless it’s super urgent, emails usually take a few days to be returned. This particular laziness merely applies to my life on campus. When it comes to those from home, both friends and family, I am even worse.

Unfortunately, I have friends from high school who I consider to be like family who I have not talked to in six months or more. A girl I consider to be my best friend, I have not talked to in three weeks. It is not that I do not want to talk to people, it is honestly that I don’t have time.

Classes, homework, work and attempting to see my friends, but the end of the day, I really just want to sleep. I honestly do feel bad, but know I am one of many of us on this campus who falls in to this disconnect with people who are no longer a part of our “here and now”. This does not make these people any less important to use but we tend to fall into this “out of sight out of mind” thought process.

Yes, people move on and people grow apart, but that doesn’t mean we need to forget each other. How many of us had a group of friends in high school or our freshman year who were like family? My best friend from home and I have been friends since we were in the 6th grade, and I was 11 years old, and she was 12. We are now 21 and 22 and talk about once every two weeks. She is basically my sister even though we are not biologically related.

This is one of my successes. We tend to forget that you don’t have to be blood to be family. I currently live 220 miles from home. I talk to my parents a few times a week, but right now the people I consider family are those around me- my friends, my building mates, my professors. Yes, I said professors. These people look out for me, and I know if I ever needed anything, they’d be there in a heartbeat.

This being said, with currently technology I really ought to communicate with my other family, the people I have been friends with for so long but haven’t talked to in so long. I currently live 430 miles, 220 miles and 395 miles from my three closest friends from high school. Of these three people I have spoken to two of these people in over a month.

Why? Honestly because I too have fallen into the “I’m too busy” mentality. Really all it takes is picking up the phone or sending a facebook message. After all, if these people are family, shouldn’t we let them know we care?