About a month ago, I went to my Little’s house for Friendsgiving with my sorority sisters and she had gotten out her yearbooks to look at her and another of my sisters old photos and senior quotes and things. I was hoping her husbands’ yearbooks were there because he and I went to school together and I was curious about mine. They weren’t and I had forgotten about it by the time I’d gotten home. Yesterday, my friend was moving and his wife had found our high school year books and so I decided to take out mine and laugh along with them, states away, at our horrible pictures and stupid messages.
Looking at my year book is always an emotional rollercoaster for me because I look back so fondly and wish I could relive those days but when I really think about it, I don’t know that I’d love reliving them. I hated myself so much back then and I just remember not eating, crying over boys and mean girls and just drama, drama, drama.
I was curious to see what I wrote in my senior yearbook for my goals, memories and advice and honestly I was a little surprised by what I had to say.
My hopes for the future: go to college, become a writer, get married, be happy.
This was shocking to me because if you asked me now what I thought I’d written I would have assumed it was something about becoming the best in my career or whatever – I knew I wanted to be a writer out of college – but I became so career obsessed over the last 10 years that I was a bit surprised to see I had such simple hopes for the future.
I’ve accomplished only one of my hopes and that’s a little disheartening, especially considering it’s been 12 years. It made me self reflect to see that even 12 years ago, my hope for myself was to just share my life with someone and be happy. I think somewhere along the line in college I really lost that ambition and became this hardened person who tried to find ways to escape my relationships whenever they felt like they were headed towards marriage or the possibility of sharing “too much” with someone. Granted, I haven’t been in a relationship in almost 7 years so who’s to say how I’d react these days. I can’t even fathom anyone wanting to be in a relationship with me, let alone pushing that away but, I digress.
If I look back at my last 4 relationships, I ended all of them. I left Andrew because I didn’t want him to lose his goals and dreams to be closer to me, I left James because I lost sight of every aspect with myself when we were together, I left frank because he cared about me so much more than I could care about him and he deserved to be loved better than I could love him, and I left Jason because at the heart of our relationship I felt empty because of how it all began and never felt like we ever really connected over anything outside of Greek life and the college experience.
Now, throw in a dump truck load of trauma and toss it around through out the years of those relationships and that will fill in the holes of my timelines and ultimately become the bumper cars that pushed me towards bad relationships or away from good ones, but at the heart of everything, it was always me leaving and always me craving something else, something better.
I think that idea of craving something better is a theme in my life because I look at this beautiful, beautiful girl who I feel so distant from, who absolutely hated herself and her body, and I wish I could shake her and make her realize how much happiness and love and beauty she had. Even then, even in high school when I was a size 8 and cared about my appearance, I couldn’t find happiness. I couldn’t find a way to love myself or my situation. That feeling stayed with me, every day, and just grew and grew, as I grew, and now I’m this shell of a person incapable of loving myself, incapable of believing someone could love me, and so overweight and disconnected I can barely look in a mirror.
Sometimes it makes me wonder what I ever thought happiness should look like.
My memories: things that made me smile and inside jokes with my friends, one for each year of high school, but my very last one was “time spent with the boys”
This one made my heart smile. I think it’s easy for me to romanticize the relationship I have with them now that we’re adults because we have truly known each other since we were kids and we still try to make time for each other, as best we can, even now — not to mention everyone’s married and working on babies – but sometimes I wonder if I romanticized too much and sort of “made up” the friendship I had with them in my head like we were closer than we really were. I do that pretty easily, and friendships that last 20+ years are incredibly rare so it’s easy to question that sort of stuff, but seeing it written there, in 2007, affirmed for me that I’m not necessarily the crazy girl who made these boys up that I sometimes feel I am.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I definitely loved them more than they loved me back then. My pages are filled with messages of “sorry we always make fun of you, but not really” and various jokes that are probably borderline cruel (maybe not even borderline) but boys love differently so it makes me smile looking back on it. To look back and see that even then, they were my final thought, makes me happy. They are the memory that stuck out the most to me – the people who shaped my heart and taught me how to really, truly, come to love friends as though they’re family. It also retroactively justifies the buckets of tears I cried at Mullets wedding just thinking about how far we’ve come.
Anyway – I’ve gotten off track a bit.
My advice: love the friends you have and befriend the ones you don’t.
Again – honestly surprised at seeing this. I think I’ve gone through so much of an identity crisis lately that this helped me understand that the core of who I am has always been about loving my friends. Sometimes I don’t know how I survive everything I’ve been through – losing a sibling to Suicide, car accidents, emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual assault, family members with addiction, an eating disorder, losing my aunt to cancer, caring for my brother with cancer – it’s all honestly too much to take in sometimes and I think the thread that has helped hold me to this world, to my last shred of sanity, has always been the love I have for my friends and how grateful I am for the relationships I have.
People hear about “the boys” and they genuinely question why I speak to them but the truth is – they are a part of the makeup of my soul. They are in my DNA, for better or worse, and I think having that friendship to look at and cherish over the years has honestly kept me tethered to reality when I’ve wanted to slip away. So many times I have wanted to give up but when I look at our memories and the lives they’re living now I’m just filled with happiness enough to push through. They have taught me so much pain, but also so much forgiveness and love.
My sorority sisters helped me survive losing my brother and kept me alive when I struggled with depression in college (though it may have also introduced me to some easily accessible bad coping mechanisms, but that’s another story) I can remember my heart swelling when my sisters came to his funeral, only having known me a few months, and holding me when I cried the night he died. My sisters who’ve walked in on me self harming and held me and loved me. Meeting my little gave me a love so pure I would go through all the drama of college again, just to meet her. My little connected two halves of my heart and married my Mullet and brought me some of the purest joy I’ve ever experienced
My friendship with Danielle and her family loving and accepting me helped me survive some of the most difficult times I’ve experienced with my own family and walking away from a friendship that had turned toxic and detrimental to my health. Having her family become my extended family was the only thing that got me through so many days where I felt like I had nothing else to live for.
My work friends at brockport helped me survive some of the most stressful work I’ve ever done, made me laugh every single day, and supported me when I had tragedies or health scares of my own. They’ve continued to believe in me, even after I lost everything I thought I knew when I had to leave student affairs and continue to make me laugh, despite our distance. (Sarah, Im grouping you in this group here just an FYI)
My friendship with my cousin and her friend group helped me get through losing my job, my career and my way of life after coming back home. Having friends that feel more like family with every passing year made it easier to come home and not regret that decision. And they make it easier to tolerate work now that half of them work there too 😉
Now, it’s 3am and I may be romanticizing again, but I don’t think I am. I think that for as deeply as I feel this depression I am in, I also feel other emotions deeply, like gratitude and love for my friends.
While I’m grateful I am able to feel this deeply about friendships, I just wish I could feel this way about myself. I wish I could see my world for what it was in the moment, rather than looking back 12 years later and seeing the happiness I was blind to then. It makes me wonder all the things I’ve missed these last few years, and all the things I’m missing now, because I can’t recognize happiness for what it is.
In college, I took a class called self in society and there was a moment where someone told me I was beautiful and I full out sobbed because I hated myself so much and just couldn’t see what she saw and it felt so genuine that I was forced to believe her and it shook me to my core. That’s how engrained my self-hatred really is. That moment was a defining moment for me and sometimes I think i spend a lot of time chasing that feeling. I look back at the girl I was in high school and I feel so sad that I couldn’t see what I see in her now – someone so beautiful, who loved so deeply, and was full of life. If I could write my hopes for the future now, I’d say that I hoped to become that girl again, because I can see how beautiful she was, but I should probably wish to be able to love myself for who I am now.
I feel like so much of who I’ve become is the physical manifestation of the hatred and disgust I’ve had for myself over the years and I just wish I could learn how to embrace who I am and believe I’m worth someone loving me the way I love others – because I do love others, a lot, and I think that’s always been the person I was at my core, even when I didn’t know it.
then I hope and pray you find yours soon! I don’t mean pure in the sense that they are reserved or sheltered from the world in a white coat never swearing or uttering a bad thing – I mean pure as in just honestly the best. Fucking. Person. Period. Like, you don’t have a bad thing to say about them because they are just who they are and who they are is dope as hell and you are so thankful they stumbled into your life. You might not be super close with this person, but you never have a bad time with them and you’re always happy to see them when you do.
of treats. The granola to my Sponge, the struggle to my bus, the ying to my yang – this is a friendship that I treasure and brings me nothing but utter happiness. Joe and I could talk about serious issues in the political climate and seamlessly (maybe not seamlessly but very confusingly, over the course of six unrelated stories) transition into a conversation about the meaning behind a dream about a fish tank and not skip a beat. I just always felt understood with him and there was never any hiding who I was or fear of judgment – just laughter and food and drinks and procrastination and all the pranks.
This friendship shaped my ability to believe there is good in this world despite all the messed-up shit you see every day. Things don’t have to be dramatic or complicated – they can just be good.
This is the family who adopts you as one of their own. These relationships are precious because they extend beyond the friend that brought you in – you share dinners, and holidays, and celebrations, and late-night talks, vacations and kitchen hangouts together. They roast you in the family group chat, or ask you to dinner on a week night. These are the people who will sit and talk with you for hours in a kitchen in your pajamas or make fun of you for snoring in your sleep. They’re your family and you’re a part of theirs and it’s a really special thing.
a lot of baggage when it comes to family. My family has had a lot of ups and downs and I’ve endured some crappy things (and some awesome things too, don’t get me wrong) and the Freeman Forest was this home away from home safe-haven for me. To know you have people who love you, when they don’t have to, is such a special thing and it heals a lot of the damage you may have picked up over the years. Group chats, and bus trips, outdoor adventures (and disasters), dinners and just hanging out in the kitchen are things you probably do with your friends all the time. These things were ordinary, but they were my favorite things to do for so long because of the people I was doing them with.
These are the family members in your life who are more than that. They’re your best friends and bridge the gap between two parts of your world. Cousins, sisters, aunts – these are people you were born into a relationship with but choose to deepen that connection outside of just family functions.
I’m really lucky to have two cousins who have been more like friends to me my whole life. Allie and Jenny have both brought me so many moments of laughter and have been the sanity I needed to get through crazy family parties, funerals, celebrations and everything in between. I would actually be lost without both of them and I’m grateful that we get to spend more time together because we choose to be more than just family by being friends as well.
and yet simple relationships. That sounds contradictory but hear me out. These are the friends who’ve known you so long they have seen you through practically everything. They were there for the bad fashion decisions of your past, they were there through your awkward stages, your firsts of practically everything and you’ve grown up together. That much time complicates a lot of things – relationships have highs and lows, people grow apart, move far away or change and there’s a lot of room for negativity to creep in if you’re not careful. It’s hard to maintain these friendships but you do it anyway. The simplicity of it all is that no matter the time or distance, these are the people make you feel at home.
For me, its likely surprising to no one that these
friends are “the boys” as I often refer to them. Looking back on our younger days, it’s sometimes really, really….REALLY hard to see why I even called them friends in high school but I promise you the deeper impact of our friendship makes the teasing and nicknames worth it. When I think about people who’ve shaped my life, these guys have a significant place in my emotional DNA.
also seen me at my absolute lowest points and stuck by me despite everything. When you grow up with people, you have to accept that you’ve probably hurt each other at certain points through that growth and that’s why I love them despite some of the not-so-picturesque parts of our past. As with all groups, there are some I have stayed closer to than others, but I can’t tell you how much joy these idiots bring to my heart when we’re all together. Seeing them grow up and accomplish things, get married and thinking of them starting families literally overwhelms my heart.
These are the friends who will never judge you because they have gone through the weirdest shit with you. (They’re actually probably judging you hardcore, but in a loving way because they’ve been there too.) These are the friends who were there for the transition years – the years where you weren’t quite an adult yet so you could afford to make horrible decisions and spend the next morning huddled together on a bed laughing and wondering how you were still alive. These are special friendships because it’s likely that they’ve seen you through horrible times that deepened your connection, but they also were there to have the best fucking time with you when you needed it.
When you’re in college, everything is this heightened, dramatic experience but when you leave you realize just how lucky you are to have lived with 9 people and have room sleepovers, spontaneous parties, nights in playing just-dance, endless movie marathons on break and every party in between where someone did something insane. When I look back, I just remember all the laughter and fun (and some of the drama) and I’m so lucky to find people I know I can count on for my whole life.
sisters were there for me at my brother’s funeral to support me when he died even though we had only known each other a few months at that time. My roommate held me the night he died and let me cry until I fell asleep. I drove to be with her when her mom died. I’ve celebrated, and cried, and everything in between with these girls and they’ve never missed a beat if I needed someone to lift me up. My last blog post was intense and the first 10 people to comment on it and offer encouragement, love and support were these women who haven’t seen or talked to me in months/years.
The friends who are literally your ride or die. They are probably the most judgmental of all your friends, but they do it from a place of love. They’re the people that just get you – no frills, no expectations – they accept and love you for your total person, even when that person is a disgusting pig or pain in the ass.
day, every day, but will also tell me when it’s been long enough in the sweat pants and I should probably start trying a little harder. They will tell me I’m beautiful and genuinely mean it just as genuinely as they will tell me I’m a troll who needs to brush my hair.
things so seriously all the time. School and work are great, but life is about being ridiculous in a restaurant at 2am as much as it’s about getting a degree or a good job. Friends should support and lift you up, but they should also tease you and help you realize you’re being a diva too. They bring the balance to your life and that’s why they’re the ones who stay with you throughout the whole rollercoaster ride.
