How the way we show bestfriendship changes as we get older

When we were kids, showing who was your best friend was easy. You spent every moment possible together. You shared even your favorite lunchtime snacks. You went through the whole ordeal of asking your mom to go to their house on the weekend even though you knew she'd make you clean your room first. When we were kids and some grown-up person would ask us, "Who's your best friend?", there was one clear and decisive answer.

Then we got a little older. Say, middle school and early high school. Suddenly there were these things called telephones and we wanted to be on them all day. It wasn't enough to perhaps be in every class all day with our closest friends--we now had to call them as soon as we got home and again after dinner to...do very little other than hog up the phone line. SH and I used to watch Friends together and take the deepest joy from being able to laugh at the same things at the same time. We used to listen to the radio and sing with each other. We'd do whatever we'd be doing if we were alone, except that we were together (but not really). [I just realized how much of a precursor these activities were to my later/current internet-heavy lifestyle, always talking to someone, yet simultaneously #foreveralone.] By this age, your best friends have become those people whose mere presence comforts you.

This continues through high school. Now you've got a friend group. This is the big leagues--it's three or four or seven people you can count on to hang out with. If you're going to the movies, or the mall, or to play mini-golf when you get out of school early after taking your AP Gov exam, it's with these guys. You do all the same extracurricular activities, so not only do you see each other at school all day, you also see each other afterschool, and then call each other to figure out the Calc homework and your lives. These are the friends you have deep serious important life conversations with for the first times. This has begun the era of seeking advice from friends, advice about that person you're interested in, what class you should take, what schools you're thinking about applying to, how to convince your Mom to let you do X-thing-you-know-she-won't-approve-of, etc. This is when your friends become partially responsible for keeping the pieces of you in order when you're freaking out. This is the era when your friends have started to surpass your family in terms of importance to your daily functioning as a social being. You show this by passing notes and lying to your mom to hang out with them.

In college, friendship begins to revolve around food and proximity. Your closest friends are maybe your roommates or the guys down the hall. They're probably the people you can call on to eat dinner together on a semi-daily (or actually daily) basis. They're the people you'll wait to go to events for even though being late is your biggest pet peeve. They're the people you have impromptu dance parties in your common room with. The people you don't mind overhearing conversations with your parents. The people with whom doing homework together becomes having incredible conversations til 3am and THEN starting the paper you have due tomorrow. They're the people you agree to stay up all night with for moral support when you don't have anything to do. They're the people that you know will come to your peformance. They do all of the advising and pieces-putting-back-together that your high school friends did, except on a higher level because this is real life shit. Your willingness to put pants on and do things with them in person, or let them come over to your hideously dirty room, talk soothingly to them when they're sobbing, let them borrow your shit for indeterminate periods of time, and to act normal in front of their parents are how you show that you care about them.

From what I have gathered so far of post-grad life, you show that you care about people in the real world by making and actually keeping Skype dates with them. By fitting them into your otherwise crazy schedule for dinner and/or happy hour if they live in the same city as you. By gchat and Facebook chat. By occasionally picking up your telephone to do something other than text and hearing their voice, which will inevitably make you realize how much you miss them in one knotty ball of want. By planning to buy plane/train/bus tickets to see them. By actually buying them.

But I have recently been introduced to what feels, to me, like it trumps any and all the myriad ways I have shown friendship for someone in the past (besides, perhaps, the not inexpensive roundtrip ticket to Denver I will be buying sometime before March). At its simplest, it means wearing this dress (without the black sash)

and standing in front of a room full of people who mean either very much to my dear friend and once-roommate, MJP, or her soon-to-be-husband, my friend CW. It means helping to organize the bachelorette party and the bridal shower. It means helping her get dressed, making sure her hair and makeup are perfect, and being there to tell her that she looks absolutely stunning, as do the decorations and the place settings. It is staying-up-to-watch-the-sun-rise-for-moral-support-alone on crack.

These are the things it is tangibly. The things it is practically. The things it will be in terms of real world actions and responsibilities.

Intangibly, impractically, in the amorphous world of my feelings, it may be the highest honor that has ever been bestowed unto me. It is you-are-significant-enough-to-who-I-am-and-how-I-got-here-that-I-want-you-to-be-beside-me-as-I-declare-that-I'll-spend-the-rest-of-my-life-doing-this-new-thing, specific-role-ified. It never occurred to me before that wedding parties are as much about love as are the weddings themselves until she asked those seven words and I started to cry. We all know how I feel about weddings and marriage for me, but that doesn't lessen my desire to want to be part of her wedding at all--she's the happiest I've ever seen her, and to be chosen to be a part of making that official? I think it might be the pinnacle of bestfriendship-expression.    

Things I Can't Stand Number Next:

when people don't believe that a man and a woman can be close friends without romantic feelings lurking under the surface on one or both parts. 

My best friend on this campus is a man. Since wresting that title from the women on this campus who used to share it, he has also managed to supersede people from home who have known me since the days of Lunchables and Sailor Moon. Not only do I never feel like I have to pretend to be anything I'm not when I'm talking to or hanging out with him, I also never feel like I can't be anything I am--those are very different sentiments, even if they initially seem like two sides of the same coin, and I've actually never had that before. We can communicate with just a look, and finish each other's sentences, and I feel like he truly and thoroughly gets me. I have this wonderful feeling of home-ness when I'm around him or talking to him that I hope never dissipates. 

But I'm not romantically interested in him in the least. First off, while I recognize that he's a beautiful man, I'm not attracted to him. Sometimes we party together and will find a section of a dance floor to dance around each other in, but I can't imagine actually touching him while we're dancing. I find the thought of grinding with him both disturbing and hilarious. I actually can't even bring myself to imagine kissing him. I don't even want to think about his dick. Even typing this has me skeeved out. We very rarely make physical contact of any sort, but I can come to him crying because my boyfriend just dumped me or because my mom is going to be in the hospital for a month and he will help me put myself back together again with just his words and the way he cares.

But when I casually mentioned to two of my former roommates that he and I had talked about maybe living together next year if he also got a job in D.C., they started making skeptical and disapproving faces at one another. I asked them what was wrong, and they both said, "Nothing." It was obviously something, so I pressured them on it, and M finally said, "Don't you think living with him is a bad idea?" I don't understand why it would be, and said as much to them. They launched into this big spheel about how living together will bring feelings that I don't know that I have to the surface and how I'll be jealous seeing him with other girls and yada yada yada. I was listening to them spewing this nonsense and this scene from Awkward Black Girl actually played in my head:

 
They could have asked things about how neat/messy he is, or whether we fight about silly stuff that would get really annoying in a shared space. They could have brought up the fact that living with J almost destroyed our friendship sophomore year, which is both valid and relevant. But no, these bitches--who actually know me quite well--basically went straight to this idea that I'm already in love with him and just in denial and how living together would force me to quit playing.

...The fuck?!

I wanted to rebut that I didn't fall for either of them when we lived together, even though we were very good friends, but Idk how much they know about my recently embraced non-heterosexuality and didn't feel like putting my shit on blast in the middle of an already tense conversation.

I don't understand why people assume that having a very emotionally intimate relationship with a person is, by definition, a precursor to wanting a physically intimate relationship with that person. Do I love him? In some ways, more than I've ever loved anyone. In other ways, not. at. all. There are countless ways to love a person, and I don't think any of them necessitate any other. It deeply offends me that these ladies seem to think I'm incapable of non-romantic love with a male-gendered person I like to share various aspects of my life with.

That Friend...

At some point yesterday, one of the top ten Twitter trending topics in the world was #ThatFriend. I didn't actually click on it, so I don't know if it was mostly that terrible "friend" or that funny friend or that dope ass friend that people were talking about, but I know which friend instantly sprang to mind.

#Thatfriend you didn't think you were going to like when you first met him through a roommate you didn't care for. 
#Thatfriend you only started talking to because you were surrounded by strangers. 
#Thatfriend whose name you all of a sudden kept dropping to the bewilderment of your other friends. 
#Thatfriend you kicked yourself for wasting a year and a half not knowing. 
#Thatfriend you fell into best-friend-ship with so quickly you almost mistook it for something else. 
#Thatfriend you can shed every last pretense for. 
#Thatfriend who just GETS you, even when he hasn't been through something you're going through. 
#Thatfriend you can ACTUALLY talk to about ANYTHING. 
#Thatfriend who makes you make sense to yourself. 
#Thatfriend who will judge you (righfully) but stand by you. 
#Thatfriend you can accidentally talk to for hours about nothing and everything all at once. 
#Thatfriend who feels more like your brother than your actual brother.
#Thatfriend who knows every detail of your life. 
#Thatfriend you spend the majority of your free time with. 
#Thatfriend who can just sit in a chair at a desk with you and you guys will have a great time. 
#Thatfriend you wish you could put a piece of in your pocket and take with you wherever you go. 
#Thatfriend you feel kind of lost without when they're out of the country for a week.
#Thatfriend you're dependent on.
#Thatfriend you're afraid to try to live without after graduation.
#Thatfriend who sort of turned almost all of your other friends into afterthoughts.

What do you do when you're less than five months away from losing #thatfriend's daily presence in your life? Do you try to wean yourself off, reconnect with your other friends? Or should you go cold turkey, like it's a breakup, and cry about it for your first month of summer and then move on? Is there even moving on from #thatfriend? Is it possible he can stay #thatfriend from afar? 

A friend from high school asked me what my New Year's resolutions were. I only really had new year's visualizations: doing well on my thesis, getting a job, finding an apartment that made me happy, living as an independent professional woman in a major city. But now I think I have one: stop letting my relationship with #thatfriend eclipse all my other friendships. I love him, but being dependent on anyone scares the shit out of me. I will hang out with each of my five closest friends who aren't in my eating club at least once a month until graduation. That's my resolution. If I don't salvage those friendships now, they'll disintegrate in a few months' time. And if I don't remember that other people can satisfy me socially besides #thatfriend, I might.    

A conversation I just couldn't have

I saw S, one of my oldest friends, for the first time since early September last night. We had the obviously necessary catch-up conversation about how school's going, how surprisingly unweird relations with my ex are, and what kinds of jobs I'm applying to and where on my end, and how moving out of his mom's house is going and whether he likes his new job on his end, and Thanksgiving plans and fabulously boring love lives on both of our ends. It was touching to listen to him protest to me applying to jobs in faraway places like Chicago and California, and when we hopped in the car for a late night Wawa run, I realized that there was one other thing that has developed in my life of late that he should know.  

Sitting next to him in the semidarkness of the car, I mulled over how to bring it up. I opened my mouth and closed it again without saying anything. You shouldn't deliver bad news while someone is driving. You also shouldn't do it once they're back in your dining room enjoying a turkey bowl and donuts. You shouldn't do it while you're exploring etsy together, and you shouldn't do it after he yawns and says he should be getting home. Life is full of inopportune moments for this conversation. Is there a right time? How do you say, best friend from childhood, who once made my mother a macaroni necklace for Kwanzaa and whom she often refers to as her favorite son (my little brother's existence notwithstanding), my mom has cancer?

Compounding all of this is the fact that I'm not entirely sure I need to tell him. Does he have to know? (Of course, when something happens with him, I tell my mom and she is genuinely concerned. I know that he would care.) I just...this isn't a topic for casual conversation. I'm not at a point where I can discuss my parents' illnesses in the context of catching up with someone. I wish he read this and just knew; that's how everyone who knows but E, K, and my dad found out. I feel like a hypocrite having shared this with people all over the internet, but some things feel too close to home to be shared with people I distinctly feel as though I'm losing touch with. I don't want this to become one of our regular topics of conversation. I want to stick to safe topics. I want our most complicated things to revolve around our love lives or how this process of trying to grow up is going.

I don't think I'm going to tell him, unless we somehow start talking about my mom and some sort of seamless segue seems possible (which seems highly unlikely). And maybe that signifies all sorts of terrible things about how I'm letting my friends from childhood/adolescence go in favor of my Princeton friends, many of whom I'll probably let go over time in favor of the friends I form in later places and times. Maybe there's a level of emotion that I can't bridge with them anymore; maybe we're just not close enough for them to need to know everything about my life anymore. 

And I don't really think I need to feel bad about this. It seems...like a natural consequence of personal growth and relocation. This post may seem like a counterargument, again, but...I feel like it's different talking about the details of my life with people who haven't known me and my family since elementary school. And if that's unfair...life's tough. Get a helmet. (Boy Meets World ftw.)

Surprises from men I know:

So it seems as though the decision I came to late Tuesday night has been negated, and this time it's NOT the result of my chronic inability to make up my mind about anything. He gchatted me this evening and asked if I had a minute, which usually means he wants to have a real conversation (as opposed to a hey-how-are-you-blah-small-talk conversation), and I had a feeling he wanted to talk about this even though he told me to not let him talk about it til the weekend (Thursday is basically the weekend, I guess). But the first thing out of his mouth once I confirmed that I did, indeed, have a minute, was that he wanted to veto the idea. And I was surprised because what man turns down the chance to get laid with no strings attached he seemed down when we were talking the other day, but seemingly before I could even process it, my fingers typed "that's fine". And while in my head I was thinking, 'Man it's gonna be hella awkward when he reads the post where I decided I wanted to,' I was actually the most disappointed by losing this opportunity to start the crazy college days I was supposed to be having for the past three years. I think what I realized as soon as he said that was that I'd come up with a lot of "there's not really any reason not to," and that didn't translate exactly into an I wanted to. I want this threesome that's not going to happen; I wasn't opposed to a consolation prize. And I'm ready for a lot of things, but settling for a delicate situation shouldn't ever be one of them. And I don't know why he vetoed it, and maybe I won't ever know, but while I certainly wouldn't call this a pleasant surprise...I certainly don't feel like I've lost anything either. 

And while I was gchatting with him, my best friend from home whom I've felt very distant from recently called me to ask if he could come over. Having basically accepted the fact that I wasn't going to see him again before I left for campus on Saturday morning, I was so surprised to be hearing from him that I stopped to ask if he was okay. He came over and warned me that he might be smelly from work, but I buried myself into him at the front door like I always do and he came in and sat at my kitchen table and teased my little brother while I made him Grape Kool-Aid (it's his favorite), and everything felt normal again. We talked about how school is scaring me a little this year, his new job, how he's scared he doesn't actually want to do anything with his degree, his family's ongoing move, how he wants to get his own place by December, things we'd done together in the past, things we wish we could do together in the near future, weird/interesting things we've watched recently...there were a few lulls, but he and I have had those since we were 13. My mom used to tease us because we'd sit on the phone "listening to one another breathe." Maybe I was expecting the worst when really he's just been busy and my visit home this time was really bad timing. Maybe we just say these things and that the time between now and the next time we'll see each other is too long to keep up the appearance that we still need each other. Maybe it doesn't matter, as long as we keep saying them.  

Through Distance and Time...

When I told two of my co-workers that my best friend from middle school was coming to spend the weekend with me in New Brunswick, they were shocked that I still TALKED to such people, let alone arrange visits. I told them that we had never really lost touch, despite the fact that she moved away when we I was thirteen (she was still twelve. baby.) and we'd never lived in the same state since. Even as I was explaining this, I realized how downright weird it was. I don't talk to the overwhelming majority of even the people I graduated high school with--only about two on a semi-daily basis. There are more I'll have occasional catch-up convos with or hang out with while we're both home, but on the whole most of my once-best-friends and I have grown apart. 'Tis unfortunate, but that's life, man...and we can still hang out from time to time, so it's not the worst thing in the world. 
But SP...it's different with her. She was whisked away out of my life before we had cell phones and regular internet access...we actually mailed letters back and forth for years. We tried to have hours-long conversations but 8 people live in her house, so tying up the landline for that long was nearly impossible. She didn't give up on me even when it looked like our trio could never reunite because T and I weren't speaking. Going to visit her the summer after our freshman year of high school was my first independent non-familial adventure. Enter facebook: she's someone I actually have regular communication with, not just a random status-like or whatnot. Through elaborate schemes of lying to our parents, she was with me the first time I ever got drunk, and when I found out that Greg and my mom broke up. And now she was here with me again this weekend. We combined childhood--water gun battles, swings, and sidewalk chalk--with grown up games--drinking Jenga, Dirty Minds, Uno with the added rules that you have to drink every time you draw a card--and like every other time, it was like no time had passed at all. 
We're such different people from such different backgrounds. It would have been ridiculously easy for this friendship to fizzle out. But it never has, and it never will. We've been friends through the miles for wayyyy longer than we were ever close while we lived in the same town. And we're luckily not one of those multiperson friendships that can only function with the whole group; our trio has awesome reunions, yes, but SP and I and SP and T can each have separate awesome hang out sessions too. And the best part is, it has never felt like it has taken a lot of effort or like we're fighting against a world that tries to pull us apart...we don't get to see each other as much as we'd like, and we don't always talk super-regularly, but something right found us in the hallways of William Davies Middle School and we're never going to let it go.
You never know who's going to come into your life. You never know how they're going to change you by doing so. You never know if the person you rely on today will still be around the next time you need a shoulder to lean on. You can bulldoze your walls and let people in. You can share and trust and love all without quite knowing if the person you're sharing with and trusting and loving is giving as much to you as you are to them. Relationships of all kinds have as much power to hurt as they have to heal, and you never quite know which will do which to a larger extent. What I'm saying here is the strength of this friendship never ceases to surprise me. May you all have such ride-or-die chicks.     

2nd 30 day Letter Challenge--Day 25: Letter to the Last Person You Took a Picture with

Dear K,

Grrrr...I find it very unfortunate when in the course of these challenges I have to write to the same person twice. I briefly pondered who I could see in the course of the day and take a picture with so that I could write to someone else, but the only really viable options were E and T and I've written to both of them already too. So, as we took a small break from the course of E's party because we "needed new profile pictures," this letter is also to you.  Actually, even if I hadn't snapped that pic, this letter would still be to you from when we saw Erykah Badu, haha.


In the week and a half since I last wrote to you, we have partied (not unusual) and we have been shopping twice. I'm glad this has finally happened--we've been talking about shopping forever. You're a good shopping buddy: not above giving me opinions on things, willing to try on lots of hats and debate how they make us look, and evidently you're the only one of my friends who has the good sense to tell me not to buy a shirt just because it's kind of cute and ONLY SIX DOLLARS. [Yo, I still kind of want that shirt though. It was SIX DOLLARS.] Shopping with you tends to bring up questions about changing styles and like, whether the way each of us dresses fits our personalities; this could be me but is this me? It's fun and makes shopping like, more intellectual or artistic or something. It's cool.  You make me think about shopping for the future, as opposed to shopping for the now, which has led to all sorts of wonderful wonderments about how Professor Maya Reid will dress.
KO said you sound like a good guy for me to have around. I think he meant in terms of the fact that you seem to give good advice and be entirely correct about the circumstances of my life when I can't see them, much like T. I learn a lot from you. And who knows, maybe the quickness with which you went from semi-random acquaintance to one of the first people I turn to when something goes wrong is just yet another example of my tendency to care too much about everything too fast, but too bad. I like it. You're semi-stuck with me now.  :P


:D,


Maya


PS--We're supposed to watch American History X sometime. I thought about that when I woke up in the TV room on Saturday. Let's make it happen.

2nd 30 Day Letter Challenge: Day 19--Letter to Someone You Worry About

Dear T,

You've had some very cryptic blog posts recently, and they make me feel like there are things going on in your life that I either don't know about at all or don't know nearly enough about. I don't want you to think for a second that just because I'm drowning in my own drama right now, I don't have time for you or your problems, be they serious or not. You're still my bestie and it would probably do me some serious good to be able to prioritize anything other than my own pity-party right now. [Trying to prioritize my work is only half-working. I'll never really be a workaholic, I'm too much of a life-and-love-aholic, and I find it hard to be upset about that though it would be convenient right now...] If I know what's going on with you well enough to worry effectively, then maybe I'll wake up with anything but you-know-who on my brain every morning. [That's getting old and downright rude.] If nothing's going on and you're just being cryptic for the hell of it, that's fine too and I won't be worried...I guess right now the not knowing is what I'm worried about. I'm worried that I've become too tunnel-visioned and self-centered (and previously relationship-centered) to know what's happening in your life, which is obviously the opposite of cool.

Talk to me, betch. Let's remedy this issue. Preferably over daiquiris [I figured out what was wrong with my blender...operator error...]. 

<3,

Maya

2nd 30 Day Letter Challenge: Day 13 [About a Week Late]--Letter to Your Closest Friend at School

One of the reasons I was originally avoiding this letter was because I couldn't possibly pick between the two of you, K and E, so now I've decided I'll just select a King and Queen of my school friends and write letters to each of you. So there. 

Ladies First:

Dear E,

GET YOUR ASS BACK FROM CALIFORNIA. JERSEY MISSES YOU. Or at least, I miss you. It's beautiful football-throwing weather today and I have a 4 hour break between my two shifts at work, but no one to football-throw with. Not being able to talk to you when my life was falling apart was JUST PLAIN WEIRD. It's funny, I guess I didn't realize how close I'd gotten to you when we were roommates sophomore year. [Confession: I had been a little concerned about sharing a bedroom with you because you were the roommate I knew least well upon moving in. That went away pretty quickly.] But then we talked a lot over the summer and every single day when you were in Oxford [until you went into I-have-to-write-my-JP-in-a-week mode, that is] and people (read: K) kept teasing us about it, but I realized that you had become one of my closest friends somewhere along the way. 
We don't agree on a lot of things a lot of times. We have radically different viewpoints on so much. Our friendship kind of makes me think that opposites really do attract sometimes. I like having you around to balance me out. 
I'm not gonna spread your business on here, but I hope you know how difficult it is for me to not be able to help you with _______________________________. I wish I could have given you better advice about it. I wish it hadn't happened to you. I wish there was a clear path to full recovery. I wish a lot of things. 
I also am really really wishing that when you move away to Florida for med school we don't lose touch. Somehow you think being busy running a tournament in California is a good enough excuse not to talk to me...being busy living your life in Florida (or anywhere else for that matter) won't be. Fyi. So get ready for the long haul, sister. 
<3,

Maya

PS Get ready to go oh so hard on your birthday. We're gonna party, well, like it's your birthday. 
PPS I'm still amazed by your ability to combat small-Azn-female syndrome and actually hold your liquor. Well, I'm amazed by you in general, but that's another story. 

*******

Dear K,

I find it really interesting that in the span of an academic year you went from being like, a familiar face I was glad to have in my Initiations group to someone I spend time with or talking to nearly every day and who I'm just not afraid to open up to. You always yell at me and threaten to stop studying at Quad with me because we get sidetracked into really great conversations that minimize the amount of actual work we get done, but as much as I tell you I'll try to do work and not be distracting, I really really value those talks we have. Even if I can't actually imagine you in Fubu and being called by your shortened name, I understand that you're one of the people who is from where I'm from [in lots of ways that aren't a physical space]. I can count on you to either have had similar experiences to me or totally feel me on mine even if you haven't. I'm continuously surprised by how easy it is to be real with you. You're also a really good listener and I have recently realized that you're a good judge of situations when I'm blinded by _______ and I should take your opinions of things into higher consideration sometimes. Don't think I don't value your opinion though, because I do...I just sometimes can't see that right away. Did you know in the course of a day once, both T and Ms. Renee referred to you as my other half? I laughed so hard, especially because you were not the one who should have had that title at the time, but it's a fairly accurate description of the amount of time we spend together as Dranglers. Like, how did I start waiting for you to eat dinner every night? I don't remember, lol, but I like it. I like how we laugh at the same places in movies. I like convincing you to have a little bit of fun every once in a while; I might even enjoy all the poking and prodding it takes to get there. You are HELLA RUDE sometimes but I've come to appreciate it most of the time; I like that I can play around with you. But then I also appreciate that you know how to be serious when the time calls for it and can bring me back to earth when I'm freaking out. I also think you're kind of just an awesome person: so smart, so driven, such a give-it-your-all kind of individual.  You work so hard all the time. You're freaking working on CANCER RESEARCH. Give yourself a freaking pat on the back once in a while, k? 


:D,

Maya 


PS I still owe you a drink.

2nd 30 Day Letter Challenge: Day Three--Letter to Something You've Owned for More than 5 Years

Dear Silver Sparkly Rhinestone Pendant that S gave me for my 16th birthday,

(Which makes it 5 years, 4 months, and 17 days so yes this counts.) We've been through a lot together. I suppose I first have some apologies to make to you. You were once part of a set. There were matching earrings, but such fanciness was soon lost. (I noticed one's disappearance in the Oakcrest High School cafeteria, and after a few minutes of frantic searching I gave up and relegated the other to my doomed collection of mistmatched earrings.) You came on a specific chain, one that was dainty and innocent and cute. ...And I broke it. Long story short, I haven't always treated you with the utmost care. But, pendant, I want you to know that you have always had my love and my respect. I want you to remember the days when I didn't take you off for months at a time, even to sleep, even to shower. I want you to remember how I would only buy silver jewelry so that whatever else I wore could match you. And now that I have diversified, and other pendants share your chain...don't think I have lost any love for you. You and your giver will always hold a special place in my heart, even if I don't brandish that spot by dangling you between my breasts everyday. I promise you that regardless of whatever battles I'll have to fight to keep your company, I will never lose you. You mean too much to me.
It's almost eerie to me how closely my relationship with you, pendant, mirrors my relationship with the person who gave you to me. He had just lost his footing as the primary person in my life then, and of all the gifts I opened at my 16th birthday party, this was the only gift to make me gasp. It was the only gift I couldn't bear to be parted from; I remember lifting my hair to let him put you on me and giving him a hug that said I wanted to swallow him whole. And I wore you faithfully nearly every day for over two years, until J gave me a ring on a strand and asked me to replace it. I shouldn't have, but someone wanted me for the first time in a long time and I said yes. And after that short-lived...I still don't like saying mistake, but I'm at a loss for another word...I went back to wearing you almost daily until friends (aka my fashion police freshman year) asked why I never wore my other necklaces. Suddenly I felt silly wearing the same necklace every day, so I diversified. I shopped. I...changed. 
And as I changed, I felt my relationship with your giver change. We fought more and more. We stopped being honest with each other. We gave incredibly serious consideration to calling it quits forever...but we could never quite go through with it, and even when it seemed like we were I never hurt you, pendant. I never threw you away or even across the room. You just sat in my jewelry box, winking at me when the light hit you, and reminding me that what he and I have is a gem, and no matter how much it changes, gets strung from different chains or worn with varying regularity, it will always be one of my life's greatest treasures. It's no longer hard to take you off, pendant, like it was way back when, but putting you on always feels somehow right, like the weight of you and the way you fall is just perfect. You are comfortable, like a favorite sweater or a best friend. That will never change.

5 birthdays later you're both still right here with me. That's how I want it to always be.

Conversely to yesterday's message, I love everything you stand for,

Maya   

Magic special letter!

Dear lesbian lover,

If I had just one wish, I'd ask for diva magic ruby red slippers, way sexier than Dorothy's, that when I did a sexy little strut in them, they'd bring me to wherever you are. That's the only wish I'd need, because it would, by extension, give me love and happiness and joy and fun and everything else I could wish for. 

I miss you, betch, and I wish you'd come back to me sooner. Counting the very hours, my love...

Your more afrolicious half<3

Diva magic ruby red slippers like these:

30 Day Letter Challenge--Day One: Your Best Friend.

So I realized that my subject matter of late has been a bit focused around one topic, and for that I apologize. In efforts to a) diversify my posts, and b) post more frequently, I'm beginning a 30 day letter challenge! I'll write a letter to a new person every day. Today's letter is to my best friend.

*Disclaimer: I have lots of besties, but this calls for me to pick just one, so I'll pick the one who loves letters. I think she deserves it most anyway*

Dear *****,

No lie, I have no fucking idea how I survived without you when we were going through stupid teenage drama and didn't talk for a few years. Now if I go two days without hearing from you, I'm like, COME BACK TO ME, MY LOVE! *withdrawal* 
I saw this little black girl and this little asian girl making a sandcastle at the beach yesterday, and it made me think of you. 
You're one of the few (and growing fewer) people in this world that I feel like I can be totally real with all the time, and get the same in return. That means I call you on your bullshit and you call me on mine. It means that when you're going through a rough time I'll run around to all the weird little shops in the town of Princeton and make you a basket of loveliness to remind you of how wonderful you are. It means I can post vague random and weird messages on your Wall and always expect a response that is usually a phone call, as opposed to at WTF?!? It means that even though you're supposed to be the crazy ninja, I am always lurking in the shadows with 2 cans: one of mace and one of whoop-ass, prepared to fight off whatever nasty little demons life throws your way. 
YOU'RE ALWAYS FUCKING RIGHT ABOUT MY LIFE. And I claim that this bothers me, but really it's just one more thing on my never-ending list of reasons to keep you around. Sometimes I feel like I'm this crazy balloon that would just go floating off into a land of all my fears and worries and dreams and random ponderings, and you're like, the adorable little teddy bear weight that keeps me tethered to the ground. 
So I guess I wanna say thanks for dealing with the ball of craziness that is me, and let you know that you're kind of the best and I don't really know what I'd do without you. And now that that silly boy is out of the picture, I shall return to my plan to make you mine!!!! mwahahaha *Steal*


In all seriousness though, until something crazy happens in the future, you are the love of my life. 


<3,


Maya