I had the best idea of my very short post-grad life today.

And it's already playing out fabulously. This morning while I was deep conditioning my hair, it occurred to me that it has been almost a month since I graduated. I was thinking about what I've done in this first almost-month, and feeling pretty smug: I had witnessed the doctor tell my mother that she's now cancer-free, successfully grilled food at a huge BBQ in my little sister's honor, gone place-to-live hunting, been chosen as my new housemates' first choice, been approved for the lease all by myself with no cosigner, bargain shopped for new home essentials, hung out with a few friends from home, vegged out on my couch for days, moved, unpacked, grocery shopped, made dinners that wowed my housemates and turned into lunches that my coworkers were jealous of, been complimented on my outfit nearly every day by at least one person, had two guys ask for my number while I was walking home from work, and received commendations on my work at work from someone else with my job title and then, through my direct supervisor, from a senior survey researcher who is evidently quite hard to please. My boss said, and I quote, "If you can please [name redacted], you can please anyone at [my company]." I had transitioned fairly painlessly to the 7:30am to 12:30am lifestyle. I'd experimented with my hair to find cute styles for work. I'd cleaned my entire house from kitchen to bedroom. Was there anything I hadn't done? 

And then I thought of all the people I hadn't talked to, and my sense of accomplishment dwindled a little. I was keeping in regular contact with KS (text and AIM) and EY (Skype and text). I'd talked to SO (gchat) and DG (facebook chat) a few times, JB (gchat) and JA (an actual phone call) once. But they're a tiny fragment of the people who are important to me from my life at Princeton. They're certainly not the only people to whom I meant it when I said that we'd keep in touch. 

So how to fix this? I could be like RG and call people randomly, but, while I appreciate that, it can feel a little intrusive. (When did that happen? Phone calls used to be what I lived for. Oh, the days of middle and high schools.) Okay, so not random phone calls. Or, yes random phone calls, but only to people with whom I'm close enough that intrusion is welcome.

Then I thought about all the people I saw on gchat/Facebook chat/Skype every day and didn't click on their names to have a conversation with them. It's like there's some line I established somewhere between people I'm allowed to just talk about anything/nothing/whatever with, to shoot the proverbial shit with, and some people I have to have something to say to in order to message. As no sooner had that thought completed itself than I realized the degree to which it is utter and complete bullshit. And it's the exact brand of bullshit that causes people to never ever keep in touch. 

I have a simple message for the world. Though I don't like it as an initial message on dating sites, between friends or close acquaintances who haven't talked in a while, "Hey! What's up?!" is something to say. "How'd moving to [insert city here] go?" is something to say. "How's your new job?" is something to say. "How are you entertaining yourself before grad school?" is something to say. Yes catch-up conversations can feel a little interview-y, but would you rather feel like you're asking too many questions or have to have a two hour conversation next year at reunions because you haven't spoken at all? In reality, you're not going to want to waste two hours of partying, which means you could never have that two hour conversation (which will need to become longer and longer as more time passes). 

So, new rule: If I see someone that I call a friend (rather than someone I call "this girl/guy I know") pop up on gchat or Facebook chat and I haven't communicated with this friend in some form in the last two weeks, I must message them just to say hey. To see what's up. To shoot the shit. I'm going to say hi because there's no reason not to, and every reason to. The best way to stay in touch...is to stay in touch. You don't have to play catch-up if you never leave "the know". So I want to stay there with as many people as I can.

Since this afternoon, I've had conversations with four people that I care about, but might not have talked to for months or longer if I thought I needed something specific to say to them. I feel so plugged in to the world right now. I didn't realize how much I felt like I was living on an island away from everyone I know. But just like that, in ten minutes of catching up, I remember all the bridges we've mad and feel so connected. The simple joys of just saying hey.              

Went to Applebees with RB (who I've mentioned recently) last night

And it was simultaneously great and really weird. It's like, she used to be one of my closest friends in the entire world. Like, spend all day together at school and after school (because we were in all the same clubs, usually as President and Vice President), then spend hours on the phone together when we got home best friends. Like we talked extensively about whether she should go on her first date with the guy she's now been dating for over six years best friends. Like knew all the sordid details of each other's complicated familial lives best friends. 

And then we went away to college less than half an hour from one another and became people who saw each other maybe once during the school year and a few times in the summer, and we almost never talked in between seeing each other. When we hang out, we instantly click again and the conversation flows naturally and I feel all warm and snuggly inside, but those hang-out sessions are few and far between.

It's...strange when every time you hang out with a person that was once one of your closest friends, you're having a catch up session. Having catch-up sessions forces you to confront the idea that you've become "old friends" rather than "friends," that you do not, in fact, know what is up in one another's lives anymore. How do you get to that point with people? How does that happen? Now you're all grown up and different and facing all kinds of new issues than the kind you used to tackle together. You used to say "See ya tomorrow" nonchalantly, and now it's long hugs because you don't know where you'll see each other again.

Saying goodbye to your friends at the end of high school is one thing. You'll see each other again on breaks and in summers; you'll always be home for something. You live there. Saying goodbye to your college friends is another thing, especially at a place like Princeton. Our alumni tend to cluster in major cities (the two most major of which are within weekend-trip distance) and our Reunions are the biggest parties known to the hemisphere. I will see these people again. 

Saying goodbye to your friends from home when you're moving away from home is a completely different thing. It's saying I'm never going to be home for this long ever again. It's saying, "If you're ever in DC...". It's making far-fetched plans to travel to Spain together at some point. It's saying, "I miss this," knowing we just have to keep on missing it. It's not saying, but knowing, that we could very well never see each other again. But like the other big goodbyes, it hopes against its own finality.   

I swear Ryan O'Connoll lives in my head.

"I just don’t want to wake up one day and feel estranged from everyone. I don’t wake up one day and ask myself where everyone went."

--The man who doesn't know he's my internet BFFL, in this Thought Catalog post

This is one of the things that terrifies me the most about becoming an adult in the real world. My friends have jobs all over the country. Hell, someone really important to me is moving to fucking Thailand. It's hard enough to keep up with my friends on campus who aren't in my eating club--how will I stay in touch with friends who aren't in the same time zone? I can barely manage to coordinate times to eat with people who live on the same campus as me most of the time, and you're expecting me to transition easily into this new world where if I want to see my close friend who just got a great job in Ohio, I'm going to have to get on a PLANE? I don't know how to be ready for this.

Sometimes it seems to me like life is this grand process of gradually getting comfortable with a group of people until you feel like you can be yourself and everything is wonderful and then getting wrenched away from that group and having to start over somewhere else where people don't know you or get your references, then gradually finding and coming to love people there and being wrenched away again. Thinking like this makes me want to be a hermit. But even hypothetical future self-induced hermithood wouldn't keep me from feeling like I'm about to lose the best relationships I've ever had.  

I Don't Understand: Friends who only miss you when you're gone

I have been close friends with one of my close friends from home since the 7th grade. He was actually my best friend from 8th grade until about my sophomore year of high school, which isn't the longest time, but was a critical juncture of my young adult life, if you will. Despite being one of the latest "childhood" friendships I formed, he has always been incredibly important to my life--even when we're fighting, even when we can't remember why we still try so hard to bridge the ever-widening gap between our lives--that's my boy, you know? 

And all summer while I was in New Brunswick, he kept telling me how much he missed me and literally begging me to come home. I got some of the saddest Facebook wall posts of my life, and blasts from the past with songs we loved in the 8th grade, and every time I told him when I was coming back, he said it was too far away. I felt so bad that at times I legitimately wondered if I should take a day or two off of work and hitch a ride home with T when she went down to visit her family for two days each week. But I didn't, and so when I texted him to complain about packing and say how many hours it would be til I was home, I got a giant "Yayyyyyyyyyy!" 

We went out with two of his friends that night, and I had the most delicious blueberry martini and fried cheesecake (which wasn't as good as he had claimed, but was still enjoyable). He came back to my house and hung out for a while, talking to my mom and my sister and feeling like he was part of my family again. Then he went home and...that was it. It's been two weeks since I've seen him, and I'm going back to school in less than a week. And I'm just a little confused as to what's going on.

Actually, that's a lie. I think I know what's going on. I don't think he actually misses ME very much. I think he misses the friendship we had between 8th grade and sophomore year, when we were two peas in a pod. I think he misses when things were simple and our lives weren't on such widely diverging paths. He's moving, and kept finding things from our early years together while he was packing, and I understand how he felt a little, because I kind of miss that friendship and simplicity too...but I would never want to go back to being the person I was then. 


It's so hard to maintain friendships when personality differences that were bridgeable in adolescence become lifestyles that seem lightyears apart in adulthood. It's hard knowing that someone misses the idea of you and him, but is evidently dissatisfied by the reality of being together.