Hi!

Happy almost-fall.

I’ve been listening to The Smashing Pumpkins and drinking chai tea as I walk to class amidst fallen leaves. I suppose in a serendipitous fall way, this is about shedding old friends, whose bodies have long since fallen out of your life. Plus, what I see when I look at college boys skateboarding to class.

FRIENDSHIP LIFE CYCLES

I’ve been thinking a lot about friendship lately. Mainly because I’ve been making new friends this semester, something I haven’t done in a while, and it’s putting a lot of things into perspective. I’m realizing that some of the old friendships I have maintained from high school are really just carcasses of things that died a long time ago. For a while, I thought that they were special because of how battered and bruised they were. I thought that seeing each other once a year and being able to catch up was the hallmark of a lasting friendship, one that could survive. I didn’t have many new friends, so there was nothing to compare it to. It seemed normal enough.

I’m realizing now that it is not. Surviving is not the same as thriving. I’m realizing that when I am going through something, or they are, it’s not each other that we call. It’s not even each other that we tell, until much, much later, perhaps over coffee one day. In making new friends, friends that I actually see and talk to and know about the lives of, I am understanding that those old friendships don’t have a pulse anymore. That they haven’t for a long time. Once in a while, we perform CPR and pretend that we still know each other, but we don’t. Not really, not anymore.

PLACES I CAN’T RETURN

I talked in a previous post about how special old friends are because they know who you have been. This is true. I have at least one that I will never let go. But they often don’t know half as much about who you are now. Sometimes, seeing an old friend can be triggering in that way. It can feel like jumping back in time to a place you don’t want to be. And strangely, I’m suddenly at a place where I don’t want to live in the past anymore. Suddenly, I am so happy with where I am right now. And where I am going. Which is huge for a writer who is constantly sifting through memories. I’m on the way out of one life stage, diving into a whole other, and high school has been buried under too many years for me to go back to now without feeling trapped under the weight of it all.

It’s kind of like a stack, where each year builds on top of the other. At first, it’s not a big deal to jump one or two floors down every now and then to say hi to who you were and who you knew. In college, that’s high school, and in high school, that’s middle school. But you never jump back to middle school from college, because eventually, the years stack up and there’s too much to crawl through to get back to those lower levels. Your connection to it dies up, and you don’t mind. You get jet lag from the differing time zones of your own life, wishing you could just stick to one place.

That’s where I am now. I just want to be here, in this world. I want to focus on graduating and moving to Brooklyn, not reminiscing over fifteen, sixteen. Which is kind of sad too, because it’s a goodbye. It’s another turn of the revolving door that is being a young adult, where the only constant is change.

Don’t me wrong, some of my old friends are gems to be held onto forever. Those coffee catch up dates are often the sweetest. But it’s so rarely that way, and so commonly the other. There is perhaps one person out of dozens to hold onto. And sometimes even that feels like a miracle.

THE SELF THAT YOU WILL TELL SOMEONE ABOUT

But to bring this back to the present moment, I’m currently sitting outside on campus, people-watching and thinking over an iced coffee, as per usual. I’m watching guys fly by on skateboards and noticing that every time I see these college boys on wheels, with their bedhead and spiral notebooks, I see them as memories, as things going away. I don’t know particularly why. There is just something distinctly boyish about them. I think of them growing up and getting jobs, falling in love, buying a house, holding their baby for the first time and remembering those sleepy, sunny mornings in California on their skateboard when nothing was theirs and everything was unsettled.

The girls never look that way. They look miles ahead, with plans and goals coming out of their ears. It’s been this way since the second grade. But the guys just seem so in this moment. I think of my brother and how he was a bit too in the moment and then he met this girl who had all of these plans and now he has plans too. He’s not so boyish anymore. But these guys on their boards still look wonderfully lost. They look like the self that they will tell someone about one day.

Sitting here on this bench, a few months from graduation, with my notebook and coffee and outlandish ideas about skateboarders, I feel like that self too.

Have a sweet Thursday.

Love, m.

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