the evolution of friendship

I have been thinking a lot lately about friendship. I have (or I should probably say had) been feeling for awhile a palpable sense of disappointment in some friendships that were and are very important to me, but because of, well, life, had kind of fallen by the wayside. Or so it seemed.

I'm sure everyone has experienced this in some form; you are really close with someone, usually because of some kind of shared circumstance. I'm thinking specifically of three different people who were on my best friend tier at different points in my life, but there are even more than this. In each of these cases, however, my friend and I came together because we were starting some kind of new adventure at the same time (grad school, teaching overseas, moving to a new city, etc.) and we kind of clung to each other. And in all of these cases, that was how we started spending a lot of time together, but a deep and real friendship blossomed. It takes more than being in the same place at the same time for someone to become a true partner in crime.

I have been in DFW for four years now. It's the longest I've lived anywhere since college. I've gone through a lot of personal changes since moving here. I've taken on a new career (twice), gone back to school, and most significantly, found the person I plan on spending the rest of my life with. Throughout these past few years, I've met a lot of people and made some good friends. But over the past few months, I've found myself missing some of those people who whom I was so close with back when I (really, we) were 20-something women flying solo, trying to navigate our lives.

I tend to internalize a lot. So as I'd been thinking about all this, I began to feel a sense of being left behind, like these people didn't want to be my friend anymore, like I was the only one who still wanted to be friends, or like I wasn't important to them anymore. It all made me really sad, and although I have a couple of new friends and even some really old ones who are a regular part of my current life and whom I consider to be on my best friend tier, I still missed those ladies. I was even having stress dreams about it - dreams where we would meet up and talk everything out and go back to being friends.

I had kind of resigned myself to the fact that as you go through your life, not every friend is meant to stay with you. Sometimes things just run their course, and it's no one's fault; people just constantly move in different directions. I still felt sad about and missed having these relationships, but I forced myself to think of the whole situation as getting older and dynamics changing (having more couple friends than single friends, for example). I was partly right. But soon, a few things would happen to change my outlook.

A couple of months ago one of these friends asked me (and a bunch of other people) to collaborate on a writing project. So we talked a little about that, and the other day I got a message from her telling me something funny about someone we went to college with. It felt good to receive that kind of message from her again.

Last weekend, one of the other friends I'm writing about messaged me needing some information from me and we ended up chatting for an hour or two. We even made plans to get together soon. I'm still waiting on the reconnection with Friend #3, but I know it will happen eventually. I was able to go to her birthday party a year ago, and I know it meant a lot to her that I made the trip. I'm still sad that we don't talk as much as we used to, but I know that we will never completely lose touch.

And that's what I've learned from all of this. Yes, we all move on, and people shift in and out of our daily, and sometimes yearly, interactions. But the ones who truly matter don't ever really go away. I imagine our friendships going forward will probably be catch up emails and text conversations every now and then, and meeting up when we're in the same area. They're different from how it used to be, of course, but that's how they've evolved, and it's the strength of the baseline connection that's allowed them to change but remain. I know I could call any of the three ladies mentioned in this story, or any of the ones not mentioned here, and they would make plans with me when and if they could. And if I really needed any of them, they would be there.

How do I know that? Because they already have been.

the latest existential crisis

I'm supposed to be doing homework, but I'm feeling a deep sense of ennui today.

I'm also having an overseas homesick day. My TEFL teacher in Prague warned us against "bad foreign days" where it's just really hard to be an expat, and those definitely happen, but I think once you spend any significant period of time as part of another culture, you're doomed to bad home-country days thereafter. Maybe it's just me.

This was all triggered by reading that a friend from college who also taught in Korea is going back. Her situation is extremely different from mine, although in some ways not. However, I've been stateside for almost four years, and I still have dreams (literally, like while sleeping) about going back. I still find myself planning how I would go about it and what I would do. Seeing that my friend is returning, indefinitely this time, made me insanely jealous.

The funny thing about it is--and if you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you will know--I was pretty miserable a lot of the time I was there. And part of me has to wonder if I'm just always wanting a redo. On the other hand, coming back and "being American" again gives you a hell of a sense of perspective, and it's that sense of perspective that I think allowed me to be as happy as I've been over the past four years. I always say that my experience in Korea was the hardest yet best thing I've ever done. It was hard, it was painful, it was exhausting, it was exhilarating, it was eye-opening, it was adventure. Reflecting on it after all this time seems redundant, but I don't know if I will ever shake the feeling that I need to be on the move. And I don't know if I can ever really let go of something that meant so much to me.

I still feel like an outsider. I hear people I know talking about things like home decor and landscaping, new cars and new houses. I couldn't care less about any of those things. Every time I hear these conversations, I think, "first world problems." Not that I've ever lived in the third world, and not that I want to, but it just seems like experiences are worth so much more than these weird status symbols (and I could write a separate essay on why I think materialism is not only an American problem), and, more than that, all of those things seem like they would build a prison that would just barricade me in and suffocate my freedom.

I don't know what the solution is. Obviously, I'm about to be a master of library science. I've started applying and interviewing for full-fledged librarian jobs. I'm excited about this (I think), but I also feel a deep sense of sadness as I wonder if my dreams of being a perpetual world traveler are dead, or at least out of reach. For the first few months after I came home from Korea, I was planning my escape. I felt incredibly trapped, disillusioned, and on the outside. On days like today, I feel like that again.

But...then there's the life I have now. And one of the hardest things for me is that you can never have it every which way. I'm totally staring at the fig tree in The Bell Jar, and I have been since I was 18. Happiness is a choice, and of course I have to decide to be happy. Even if I went back to Korea or somewhere else, I would have to make that choice. Today, I was sort of beside myself at work and on the drive home, and I wasn't sure how I could make everything that I want fit. But then I walked in my house and I saw my partner, and I couldn't help but smile. And I can't rationally reconcile it just yet, but I feel like it is going to be okay. Somehow I will find a balance. But it feels really good to have someone by your side.

Our plethoras of experience make us who we are. If I didn't have the weird mishmash of life choices that I have, I wouldn't be where I am or who I am, and I wouldn't know what I know (although there is always so much more to know!). And all of those experiences melt and coagulate, and you never know when or how they will serve you. I'm not ruling anything out.