Friends Till the End

Do you ever feel like you've missed some important life step? A step that everyone else around you has taken or is in the process of taking, but somehow you skipped it and are now left outside the loop, jogging on a different track. Wondering where everyone went. It happens when the inside jokes formerly close friends post on facebook make zero sense to you and feel more like messages of "you don't know me anymore" than silly gags. Or when the entire sphere of people you know seems to be pairing off into happy little couples, dining and dancing and marrying and multiplying, with or without you, in the face of your bewilderment. How does it happen? How could you miss so much of the lives you once felt close to? I guess it's an easy question to answer. You leave for two years. It's more than that, though. I don't feel like I've known someone, really known someone and been a more or less daily part of their life, for more than two years. Ever. Best friends, boyfriends, whoever. My mom, dad and sister being the only exceptions. My friends back home who I consider close are the ones I correspond with through some sort of medium maybe once a month, tops. I know the very simple, surface basics of what's going on in their lives. My close friends here will all be scattering to different parts of the world in four months, myself included. And even now I rarely get to see them. I'm horrible at staying in touch. How do people do it? How do people keep their close friends close? Is it something none of us can do? Is it something only the loners slash wanderers struggle with? Am I missing something important?