Old New Friends

Tonight I learned that your friends, your true friends, are always your friends. Time and circumstance may separate you. Others may invade or occupy the space that friends once filled. Careers and new opportunities may create distance between you. But when the time is right... when you really need them... not simply when you THINK you really need them most, but when they are supposed to be a part of your life, they will be. Your true friends are always your friends.

Twenty years may pass. But it's comforting to know that once you're all back in one room, the conversation may have matured or changed due to life experience but the friends are still the same. The phrases you once shared still work. The laughter is familiar. Some of the old jokes still stand. And your friends are still your friends.

And at the same time, it's all new too. Your old friends, after twenty years, are your new friends. They are your old new friends. With new stories and different experiences that have brought them through your time apart to get to now.

Twenty years ago, when you were 18 years old, you couldn't imagine life getting any better. You were surrounded by your four best friends, laughing and plotting and planning the future and pulling off seemingly impossible but unforgettable moments. Life was joyful and fun, even when it was painful. Because it doesn't get better than five friends on a new adventure every day.

But it does get better. Time and circumstance may separate you. Others may invade or occupy the space that friends once filled. Careers and new opportunities may create distance between you. There are births and deaths and divorce and a lot of other things you'll never discuss. But when the time is right, your old friends will be new again. And the hugs will be better. The sincerity of emotion and feeling is stronger and more solid. Ashley still won't get the jokes. Cammie will still giggle until she's red in the face. Sylvia will tickle you with her stories and catch phrases. Mikki will spout off all the "what's meant to be." Roxanne will stay quietly committed. And your friends... Your true friends... will still be your friends.

Thank God for that.

Finding Yourself

There is no one schedule to follow on the journey to find yourself. There is no one prescription to cure your ills along the way. There is no one path nor one map for that matter...

For some of us, it seems a never-ending voyage, a rocky road filled with disappointment due to either poor choices or unsavory circumstances. And often times there are few answers to the hundreds of questions that weigh on our minds.

The easy part of finding yourself is having the power to define or create who you are. The hard part of finding yourself is deciding who you will create. There are people who seem to know who they are from the moment they are born. I am not one of them.

Knowing what I like and understanding where I excel comes easy but I have lived my life by trial and error. Settling down is taking me longer than I anticipated (and probably longer than my parents wish it would have). But I think I've done enough testing. I have had plenty of highs and hit enough lows to know, now, what is good for me and what is bad and where I belong.

I have yet to completely find myself; to create the loving, caring, wildly successful & exceedingly happy woman that I want to be. And until I do, I will keep living. Really living.

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer." ~Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

2-1/2 is Normal

I park on the 2-1/2 floor. That's right. 2-1/2. Not the 1st floor or the 3rd floor. Not even just the 2nd floor. I park on floor 2-1/2.

And I think my parking habits are generally a good reflection of how I operate in the rest of my life. Simple isn't really my thing and neither is normal or standard. I enjoy different, slightly left of center, not quite right.

I love quirky people and odd cars and I think fat babies are happy, no matter what the media tells us. I also think skinny girls are just mad because they're hungry; they're not really stuck up.

I have a thing for the ugly guy in the group. I don't know why. It just happens. (No offense, of course, intended to guys who are aware that I have liked them.) I love to laugh and my humor is not always appreciated by others because I can find humor in just about anything including death and religion. My Jesus t-shirt is evidence of that. (It about put my mom over the edge.)

I've never heard people say, "that girl's just not right," but I'm sure it's been said. And that's ok.

I could eat collard greens for breakfast and I love the smell of a sweaty man with beer on his breath. I would sit for 12 innings in the rain just to see a Cardinal victory, especially if they were playing the Cubs. I sleep with 6 pillows which is not only weird but it says something sad about my love life; and I wrap myself up like a burrito in my blankets in the winter. When I was a kid, my favorite chore was scraping "bone dust" off of the meat in my dad's butcher shop.

I love to be barefoot but I hate feet. It's my greatest contradiction in life. I hate rules but I love process. That's my second greatest contradiction. How does the top three round out? I am extremely claustrophobic but I love to be hugged.

In this life, the greatest lesson I've learned is that everybody's normal is different. We cannot judge one another by the standards we have set for ourselves. Lifestyles, tastes and the way we do things vary based on our normal, how we grew up, where we've lived, what we've learned. The fact alone that we were raised in different homes, under different circumstances makes our normals different. The fact that you'd rather park on the 3rd floor or the 2nd floor because parking on 2-1/2 is not quite right makes our normals different.

2-1/2 is normal. It's my normal. Even if it makes you a little uncomfortable...