About halfway through the session, my CLTC coordinators started saying a new mantra: "Friends Don't Fade."

I think it was meant to remind us that the friendships we were building weren't supposed to end when we packed our duffel bags. But if I'm being honest, almost nobody really said it back. I didn't. It became one of those little chants that slowly disappeared into the background noise of camp.

Ironically, it didn't mean anything to me until after I got home.

I've been going to my summer camp for eight years. Every August, leaving is heartbreaking. Every year, my friends and I promise we'll stay in touch. We swear this time will be different. We text for a week or two, maybe a month if we're lucky, and then life quietly gets in the way. Before we know it, the next conversation is a week before camp starts again.

I expected CLTC to be the same.

It wasn't.

I have never left a place feeling so completely broken open.

It feels like my heart was taken apart and scattered across the world, each of my brothers and sisters carrying a little piece of it home with them. And somehow, instead of making me feel emptier, it makes me feel fuller because every piece of my heart that left with someone else reminds me that a piece of theirs stayed with me.

The physical reminders of CLTC slowly disappeared. My henna faded. I'd washed away the last traces of lake water, dirt, and campfire smoke. My hammock is folded up in the back of my closet. My BBYO shirts are clean, folded, and back in my drawers.

But the things that actually mattered haven't faded at all.

My phone still lights up every few minutes with messages from people who were just months ago strangers. FaceTime calls somehow turn into conversations that last until two in the morning. Plane tickets are already being booked. We aren't talking about if we'll see each other again; we're figuring out when.

For the first time since leaving a camp, I don't feel like I'm trying to hold onto friendships that are slipping away. I feel like I'm holding onto people who are reaching back just as tightly.

Maybe that's what "Friends Don't Fade" was always supposed to mean.

Not that distance doesn't exist, because it does.

Not that saying goodbye doesn't hurt, because it absolutely does.

But that real friendships don't disappear just because the place where they were created does.

The camp ends. The bracelets break. The henna fades. The dirt washes off.

But somehow, the people don't.

And I think that's the most beautiful thing CLTC gave me.