Just stumbled upon (no I mean actually found it by random browsing and some prodigious Google+ stalking, not the site StumbleUpon, which is also pretty awesome) a friend’s blog. I always thought of her as a kid, in the sense that she was like 1 year younger than me and thus was always gonna be the baby of our group. TURNS OUT SHE GREW UP. And has adult thoughts and doesn’t just elbow me when I’m being a prick or laughs uproariously at my various antics. I mean she’s a real person with really deep thoughts and really powerful emotions!
Ok so it wasn’t that bad, but for me what struck me was how little I knew her. It was like when you catch the same movie on TV constantly and you only see the same 20 minutes. People ask “Hey have you seen such-and-such movie?” and you’re like “Oh yeah, that movie! Yeah, I’ve caught it a few times on TV!” And then you finally manage to catch the movie as it starts so you watch it all the way through. But it’s not a comedy! Those 20 minutes you’ve seen are the only funny part of the movie and it’s actually a very serious, very deep drama.
My friend is a vivacious person. I hate using over-the-top adjectives because it makes me sound like I’m either studying for the SAT (GAWD not again, never again!) or I’m trying to impress my hot friend who just proclaimed that she likes “brainy guys” and not “hot guys” (which, to be fair, we all know is a goddamn lie).
But this friend is truly vivacious. She grabs life by the horns and swings it around. I remember being caught by her gravity rather than slowly drawing her to me by various kind acts that eventually make all of my friends utterly and hopelessly dependent upon me (some people say “Hi” and look for common interests…I’m slightly more insidious—damnit, I apologize…).
She’s the type of person who makes YOU her friend instead of being YOUR friend. That’s not to say she is selfish, but rather that she lets you know that she likes you and she really grabs on to you. Maybe that’s my narrow view of her talking, but I knew instantly that I liked her. Not as a girl, but as a person and someone who was so genuine and kind and full of life that I wanted to be a part of that.
I heard once that the people we choose to be our friends are people who have personality traits that we want. I couldn’t agree more; this friend’s love for life and the way that she just OWNED every second of her life—I wanted to live one day of my life like she lives every day of hers.
Anyway, time and distance eventually made us drop out of touch, but we still chat on Gchat whenever we see each other. She’s one of those few people I know I’ll never get sick of hearing from. Reading her blog showed me a different side of her, however, and it got me thinking. She wrote a post about how everyone around her is growing up so quickly and I thought to myself: “That’s YOU! When did you become an adult?”
I just wanted to commemorate this moment somehow and celebrate her. She is such a strong, independent woman with so much to offer this world and I would love nothing more than to get back in touch with her. Lately, I feel like I need a recharge of the part of me that grabs life by the horns and swings it around. It’s like I’ve been looking for it all this time and here she is, to save me from the follies of myself.
So, to my friend and her awesome blog, I will definitely be stalking you in the future. You’ve become such a wonderful person that I’m happy to have been even a small part of who you are and I hope to be there for you one day when you need it, just like you were (unknowingly) here for me when I needed it. Just by being you, you helped me. Now that’s exactly the kind of friend I hope to be to all my friends.
It is truly my friends who save me from my own follies
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