The Ones Who Help Me Figure Me Out

I know these people. But I’m having a hard time finding words to describe them. They came to visit me this weekend. Five of us all together. I had never realized how small my apartment was nor how few bathrooms I had (one). But around these other four, personal space is not usually a luxury. And that’s just fine.

To describe these people as girlfriends, old college roommates, besties…none of that really works. Who they really are are the ones who walked alongside me for four years as I tried to figure myself out for the first time, on my own. And I alongside them. They were with me when I first fell in love, had my heart broken and first lived abroad. They were in the kitchen when I baked/burned my first loaf of banana bread, in my room as I made the terrifying phone call to a boy to ask him to a sorority function and sitting on the coach beside me as we laughed and laughed and laughed our way through those four years of life suspended. College isn’t real, you know.

They still see each other at important events: birthdays, showers, holiday weekends. While I limit my Texas visits to weddings and Christmas. The sporadic nature of our visits would be easier if the “finding yourself” part was done. Without them, I find it difficult to figure out the parts of me left to be figured. But in my mid-twenties I’ve realized there is much figuring still to be done and it is possible, though not preferable, to do so without the familiar faces.

Sitting around at dinner one night, if midnight at a greek deli counts as dinner, I looked at everyone and wondered how we had all met, all become close. How this particular set of people of all the people had become linked. I had no answer. I think very little logic is involved when finding lifelong friends.