It felt good this morning to get back to a semblance of normal. The last week and a half has been full of activity, with a lot to think about and process. So, when I woke at 6am I was rather annoyed – I had been up until midnight or so, playing online games with Andy and friends. I woke knowing that it was Saturday, and when I went to bed, I was excited at the prospect of sleeping in. But instead my eyes pinged open in my still dark bedroom, and I knew it wasn’t meant to be. I rolled over to look at my phone and sighed heavily at 6am on the fucking dot.
I laid there for a while, thinking of things that needed done and things that have happened over the last little while and things that could potentially happen in the future. I sensed that 2020 wasn’t done with the roller coaster several weeks ago, and I noted it in one blog post or another. I wasn’t wrong. I’m not mad, to be perfectly honest. This is a year of learning – mainly about myself. The roller coaster is providing me some closure on past hurts and things that are holding me back in life. I’m ready to knock this shit out and get on with it. I don’t know if the next three months will be good or bad or like the past year has been and be a mixture of the two; but I’m here and I will make my way through it like I make my way through everything – with a little bit of humor and a lot of determination.
I finally got up and proceeded with waking up – water and tea and a shower. I took some time to deep condition my hair and apply a face mask. I decided on a yoga and meditation session, putting my phone on ‘do not disturb’ for the first time in the history of ever. I worry so much about something bad happening if I leave my phone unattended. I feel like it would be my luck that someone would need me if I make myself unavailable. I feel that in purposely ignoring my phone that I am setting my little world up for disaster. First and foremost, how conceited am I to think that the world will end if I ignore my phone? That’s kind of a joke, but there’s some truth to the statement. And lastly – damn it, I deserve to disconnect completely sometimes, even if it’s only for 20 minutes. A lot of times when it’s time for my mindfulness sessions my phone explodes with people wanting to chit chat. No fault of theirs, and I love my friends. But it’s not emergencies that are taking me away from my inner contemplations, it’s things that can wait a few minutes.
It was nice to do these things. To drink my tea and attend to myself for the first time in a while.
And as if the universe wanted to say, “told you so,” there were zero notifications waiting for me when I exited the meditation session and turned ‘do not disturb’ off. Noted, universe. Noted.
Now the morning is almost over, and I have a full day ahead of me. I started this post but stopped to talk to Sophia and do my nails and run Matthew and his girlfriend to the park. Ultimately, I knew this morning that I would end up writing – I knew that I needed to. I haven’t written in over a week, and I needed to get some words out of my head to make room for everything else that’s going on in there. I turned on Slacker Radio and noticed that they have loaded some new songs onto my standard rock station – new Evanescence (oh, how I love Amy Lee), a song by a band called Avatar and another one by a band called Cleopatrick that I’m unsure of, a smattering of other songs that I am interested in getting more familiar with. I have my eucalyptus mint candle burning and the lights blazing. I’m ready to knock this post out and get back into a writing rhythm.
“Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.”
Aristotle
Last weekend, Sophia and I embarked on an adventure to Minnesota – a girls shopping weekend. I crossed a lot of things off my list of things I want to experience in life, and I did it with one of my newest yet closest friends. I couldn’t have asked for a better experience.
Last night, I sat in front of Rosalyn, playing a silly game from my teenage years with Andy, making ‘that’s what she said’ jokes as we fought impossible monsters with our impossible characters. Andy asked, “What kind of character do you want to be?” and when I responded with “I want to be pretty and I want to be able to fuck shit up,” he signed heavily and said, “Of course you do,” rather indulgently. And helped me create the character. I can’t believe I’ve known him for twenty years – that’s absolutely mind blowing to me, and the things that we’ve been through have forged a friendship unlike any other. Few understand it, but they really don’t need to. That’s the beauty of relationships – of any kind – with people. The only people that need to understand how it works is the two people it is between.
This evening, I’m meeting Oliver for. . . I don’t know. Coffee, because I started drinking it again – with modifications. We may shop, we may go to dinner. Oliver and my meetings are often very spontaneous, as our friendship has always been. I feel like we fell into being friends back in high school, and without realizing it we were suddenly sharing music and notebooks of poetry and stories and secrets. The next thing I knew it had been twenty odd years and we’re adults, each individually pursuing careers in different areas of the arts, and meeting up spontaneously for whatever suites our fancy at the time.
I have never ‘wished’ for a friendship, as the quote so literally states. I have very few close friends, I’m by nature rather reclusive. I don’t go out ‘looking’ for friends because of this.
People happen to me though, it seems. I encounter people in life and I just know. I know that they are going to be a part of my life in some way, shape or form. I’ve looked into this a little bit, because I’ve always wondered about this pull I feel to individuals and if it was a legit (so to speak) thing. It is. There are people that are just meant to be in your life, and you do feel an almost physical pull to them. They enhance your characteristics and bring out the best in you – and sometimes parts of you that you didn’t know were there until these people happened into your life.
I knew when Andy bounded up to me the first time I walked into his home and hugged me like we were old friends. I knew when Oliver sat across the lunch table from me my first day of middle school with his metal band t-shirt on and a look on his face of disguised alertness. I knew when Sophia breezed into the office that I was training out of, her auburn hair flowing behind her and her hot pink blouse screaming ‘look at me!’. I knew when Emma introduced herself in her confident way and when Noah and my eyes met as we stood next to each other at a concert, then complete strangers. There are other people in my life that I knew instantaneously were my people – the moment we shook hands, the moment that they walked into the same room I was in, a meeting of eyes across a crowded room, a phrase uttered in conversation that spoke to me on a deeper level than most – It’s not always a person that you are destined to be in a relationship with. These sparks you feel for another person aren’t always sparks of an eternal love, in the traditional sense; sometimes they are the sparks of an eternal friendship. Only time will tell.
Andy always seems to call when I have a real bad day, and Sophia seems to know when to give me my space because the thoughts in my head are too heavy; Noah knows exactly what I’m talking about when I describe the sound of a new song or band I’ve come across, and Oliver and Emma speak to the sides of me that I keep mostly locked up – my more confident, outspoken side, and simultaneously the side of me that is softer and more apt to express feelings. I speak of these few individuals because they’re ones that I have named and spoken of previously here, but I have a few others that have graced my life that I wouldn’t want to leave my side, either.
I wanted to talk more about Sophia and my trip – it really was spectacular, a much needed break from the landscape of my every day life, an adventure across a time zone and new states and terrain that I have never seen or visited. I took pictures that I haven’t had time to edit yet and I wanted desperately to put some words to the experience. This post didn’t end up that way, however. I wanted to highlight the many ways that friendship begins and grows, and the fact that my friends come from all walks of life and have happened to me when I needed them to, and have stayed because I needed them to. I truly couldn’t imagine my life without them. I didn’t ‘wish’ for these people to be my friends, they happened. And they have become an integral part of my life.
It’s time for me to get on with my day though – I have shit to do and people to see. Happy Saturday. Don’t take your friendships for granted.
Photo by Hudson Hintze on Unsplash
So, This is Real Life 