And I have. Loved you, that is, in the most platonic of ways. I feel I should add that since this is very rapidly turning into a love letter and apparently I've been bottling it up all this time and finally letting it out is causing me to go completely off the rails. But I want you to know what your friendship has meant to me, because it has grown and changed over the years, just as we have grown and changed. And I honestly don't know how sixth grade ended and seventh began and that was when I first thought of you as my best friend.
It was a struggle during those years. My family had moved, we had left our whole life in Texas and we were starting a new one in Ohio. My parents had new jobs, my sister was at a different school and finding her own ways to make friends and fit in, and I felt lost. I didn't understand the customs of the other kids, couldn't figure out how to join a clique. And maybe this is how we found each other, because even though you are friendly and likeable, beautiful and kind, you've never really been part of the "in" crowd. Maybe our shared glasses-braces-band geek combo brought us together. Middle school was awkward; only many years later did I realize that we all felt that way. But when you and I were together, walking to school and sharing a bag of popcorn, organizing music in the band room, in love with the same boy in art class, all the awkwardness fell away, and I got to just be myself. You made me strong. You made me bold. Knowing that NO MATTER WHAT, you would still be my friend, gave me peace in the midst of all the uncertainty.
High school was different. It broke my heart when you dropped French, when you no longer sat beside me in my favorite class. Because you had already started dating that boy, and later you dated the other one, and you went back and forth for a few years, and I was jealous of the time you spent with them. It started to feel like we were going in two different directions, and I wondered if it would be the end of us. You were the only one who could get me to dress up for school, to deviate from baggy jeans and thrift store sweaters. You got me to sing karaoke. You introduced me to 80's music, especially that Cyndi Lauper song you always wanted to play in the practice room during study hall. You were playing music and I was studying for a test. After school, you wanted to get ice cream and I just wanted to go home and watch cartoons. But then we both got jobs at the movie theater, both of us crushing on boys who worked there. And somehow, between band camp and work and that tv show we liked, we made time for each other. I met the man who would one day be my husband, and you got a break up letter tied to your garage door.
We went to different colleges. I had been advised to NOT go where my friends were going, to avoid pulling a Felicity. That's one decision I've regretted. I think we both would have been better off transitioning into that new phase together, and I could have become a Buckeye fan years earlier. I felt lost once again, I didn't have you by my side to give me courage, and I fell on my face. The best memories I have of college were the weekends we spent together. Thank you for that, for being a constant, even from a distance. I should probably thank you for helping me actually begin my relationship with Chris, for passing along my contact information after I left for school and decided I missed him. For being a very welcome third wheel while I tried to get over my shyness.
And then it came: graduation! And you were there. And oh, the freedom! I got to move away and start my "career" and thanks to cell phones and unlimited nights and weekends, we got to talk for hours and hours. But the best part of those post-college, pre-marriage years was the one when we lived together. I'm so glad we did it. I don't care that our furniture was mismatched or that my "bed" was a mattress on the floor. I loved watching Law and Order: SVU marathons and Family Guy on your tiny tv, all our trips to Wendy's and Kroger, battling traffic on game day. Mostly it was fun to be adults together, to figure out our friendship as we entered another phase of life. You were the first one I showed my engagement ring to, the one who would stay up so you could get me to say funny things in my sleep, the one who supported my plan to destroy the alarm that went off for an hour each morning as our other roommate kept hitting the snooze. We had our Oscar and Felix moments too. I can't count how many times I came home after being gone a few days to a counter full of dirty dishes. I know...it was our other roommates who left them there. I know...you were just about to wash them. Except that you didn't. Ever. I had imaginary fights with you as I scrubbed those dishes, complaining in my head that you always *said* you were going to clean, but you very rarely did. Bygones. You have so many wonderful characteristics, it's okay that you aren't Martha Stewart.
2005 was supposed to be a great year. I got married, and you were there again, standing next to me, supporting me. You got engaged just a short time later, and I was so glad that it was him, a man who doesn't mind driving us to Taco Bell late at night and laughs as we try to order as The Target Lady. Then you took that trip with your mom and sister, not knowing it would be the last one. We went dress shopping with your future mother-in-law, and I wished that she and I could make up for the fact that your mom wasn't there, that she spent the day getting tests done. And even though your wedding was coming up quickly, it didn't come soon enough for her to be there. Because just two months after she got the diagnosis, she was gone. And I came to the calling hours, and I was once again amazed by you, how strong you were, standing next to her casket and greeting everyone as they came through. Your dad seemed a little overwhelmed, a little lost, and your sister was still so young; you were the one keeping it together. I didn't know what to say, how to tell you these things that I saw that week, really all those weeks when you were taking care of her and trying to do so much. All I could offer was pizza and a night to take a break from all of it. Two months later, you were saying your vows, you were lighting a candle in memory.
It was hard to keep up the pace of friendship the way we used to. We lived in different cities, we both worked, my husband is allergic to your cat. We didn't have the unlimited time we used to. But still we kept at it. We visited, we called, we made a place for each other in these new lives. When I had my first baby, you came to see me, to meet him. You made me laugh so hard I was afraid my stitches would tear, and the doctor would have to go back to work on my belly, making me look like Frankenstein's c-section. I had my second son, and worried that we had become too different, but then one day you called to say you'd peed on the stick and it was positive, and you were so nervous that the baby would fall out, and I laughed like the experienced moms do, because I remembered that feeling. I thought about you alot during that pregnancy, about how much I relied on my own mother for advice and help with my kids, and I wondered how much you were missing yours. And each year, I think about you in October, I always think I should send you flowers or something, but it doesn't seem like enough. And I think about you on Mother's day, a day that is now about celebrating you, because you are a wonderful mom, but it's also a day to remember your own.
How do I sum it up? You have been my life jacket, my dance partner, my better half, my ride home, my confidante, my roommate, my friend. I can't imagine what my life would have been like without you by my side. Our 20th anniversary seems as good a time as any to put it all into words, to let you know how much you have meant to me, and to wish for many more years to come, to see how we change and what stays the same.
Such a beautiful post, Rachel. You two are so blessed! :0)
ReplyDeleteThis is such a lovely tribute to your best friend.
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