Keep the friends who knew you before you figured things out. They saw the rough draft and stayed.

Anybody can like the finished version of you. The people who were around for the awkward stretch, the bad phase, the opinions you would never repeat now, chose you without the polish in place. That kind of knowing cannot be added later, since nobody new can go back and witness it. They are also the only ones who can honestly tell you how far you have come.

Message one of them this week for no reason at all. Distance grows quietly when nobody has done anything wrong, and one text is usually enough to stop it.