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The bouquets are there, the teddies are there, and the parents couldn’t be prouder, but the air feels heavy with hugs that you do not want to let go. Photographers are capturing moments to hold onto forever since memories are the only thing left to hold on. If your graduation feels heavy, it only means that you have known true friendship.

Graduation celebrates your perseverance throughout your student journey. Yet, it never prepares you for the delicate goodbyes to the friendships that carried you through. The thrill of rushing to your friends after class and grabbing lunch with them, surviving group assignments and exam season preparations were manageable because you had each other all along. The kind of friendship where you found each other in the unknown, far from home, still feels like yesterday. Now the hugs do not feel enough, as if you’re trying to hold onto more than just the moment. Bittersweet in its own way, we all knew what we were signing up for.

Amid the celebration, you catch yourself in another lens, still staring at the assignments, and still confused at the requirements. But somehow, you have learned to embrace confusion instead of fearing it. It feels like a triumph to look back at the quiet struggles you overcame just to keep pushing through. Graduation proves how consistency pays off. Sometimes, all you can do is help yourself and build resilience until confusion feels more like growth than failure. In the end, you find a friend in yourself too, another version of yourself that you’re carrying  forward.

However, while some wished that they had someone to say goodbye to, your friends are calling you back for one last group picture. Soaking in the moment, you realise that it is time to let go. The hardest goodbye is not knowing if your paths will ever cross again but even your city will miss them with  you.

 You do not graduate from friendship, but rather graduate with it. Graduation is not an end, but a beginning. Once you’ve learned what a beautiful friendship is, you’ll carry it into everything that comes next, both with others and with yourself.

In the end, when words fail, a goodbye speaks in its own quiet language.