Dead Horses

Sometimes I hate reading things I've written in the past. 

When I found of all of these bits of writing on archive.org the other day, when I was looking for some of the old things I've written, I found a lot that might have been better left UNFOUND.

Sometimes nostalgia gets you. It's just beating a dead horse, and the horse is old and rotted and stinky. 

Sometimes it hurts more because you know you don't NEED the reminder of things right in your face, because they are always there in your head anyway. This is from 2002:

Even now, he is every pair of deep brown eyes I look into, every man I laugh to tears with. He is every comforting voice on the telephone, every pair of converse sneakers, painfully familiar.

Some things don't ever change.

Perks

For some reason, last night I decided I wanted to go on an adventure. Alone.

I don't usually fly solo. I have two nights a week without Elise and tend to spend them with close friends, doing this together. It's not often that I hang out with people who are out of that small little circle, and like I said, for some reason, on a whim, I decided to go out alone and seek some friends and adventure away from my normal routine. (Wow, just saying that makes me realize how boring my life is.)

A few people from New London were going to Westerly, Rhode Island to see a friend of ours, Thor (Rob) Jensen play some solo music at a cool little bar called Perks & Corks. Having nothing else to do, and wanting some adventure, I decided to drive down there. 

Now, keep in mind, I've been to Westerly on many, many occasions, but now that I look back on all of those occasions I realized that I have never actually been the one to do the driving there, and certainly not on my own. It's twenty miles from home, and somehow I took a wrong turn somewhere and got lost, like REALLY lost in the pouring rain for a half an hour. It was frustrating at first, but then, after I had passed through the same intersection for the third time and still hadn't managed to find the right fork in those roads, I just started laughing at myself. I kept driving. I kept rocking out to my tunes and no one told me to change the music or turn it down. I had found adventure.

The bar was packed. I was standing there, waiting to order my first drink, when I saw a familiar face walking through the crowd. It was an old friend of mine who I had worked with at IHOP years ago. 

"ANDY?" I practically screamed at him, and he looked up at me and then looked down.

"No, NO!" he said.

There was a split second when I thought he was really going to keep walking and pretend he didn't know me. He was always sort of shady for no reason (which, later in the night, he denied), but he is still exactly the same. I haven't seen him in probably six years, but he looks like he hasn't aged a minute. And he certainly doesn't ACT like he's aged a minute. 

I wanted to take a picture of us together, but he wouldn't let me, so let me describe Andy. He's about six feet tall, maybe 300 pounds, LOUD, erratic and unpredictable, and black as night. I mean, really. I met him when I was nineteen, and he, thirty-one at the time, was the first black friend I'd ever made in my life. I grew up in a small country town and our minority population was about 1-2%, I'm not even kidding. The first black students we had in my class arrived in eighth grade, they were twins, and I didn't have classes with either of them, and high school was the same. I was sheltered and didn't know what I was getting into when I took a third shift waitressing job at IHOP, but let me tell you, it changed my life, and for four years, Andy was there to see me through my best and my worst of those times, and I always cherished his friendship.

But then, alas, IHOP closed. We got new jobs and we drifted apart and away, and here we are, years later, and I realized that Andy and I had known each other almost exactly ten years. Ten years, and I've changed, and he hasn't, and part of me wanted to pull myself closer to him and that life we shared on those long IHOP nights, and part of me wanted to run even faster and farther away. I'm still torn over where I am going and what I am doing with myself and who the hell I am under this skin I'm dragging around. I'm still shocked every day that growing up is THIS hard.

I left the bar when I was still having a good time - that's something I've heard about other people doing. I'm usually the type to stay and see the often bitter ends of things, but I had such a great time catching up with Andy, such a great time with my beers and Thor's music and the cozy atmosphere, I said goodbye while I was still floating on it - and then I got lost again. Seriously. I had to take Route 1 all the way back to Mystic, and as I was crusing down the highway finally, over the bridge that would take me home, I decided to do something else that I have never done before.

I sped into New London, parallel parked quite haphazardly, and sprinted into the Oasis. 

"DID I MISS LAST CALL?" 

I didn't. I had the sweet bartender concoct me a delicious surprise, and I spent the rest of the night talking with one of my favorite new friends from the Great Campaign Trail of '11, Sean. I've actually known him for years, but we never really talked or got to know each other. He's sort of like a breath of fresh air in life, as corny as that may sound. He makes me laugh until my stomach hurts and feeds me Cheetos when I'm drunk, so obviously he's a friend for life now.

So I've done it, by the way. I've offically kicked NaBloPoMo ass, and I've blogged every day for a month. That means I get to cross off the second item of my 30 Before 30 list, and also check off a notch on my Life List, as I've visted another state since writing it. Which is kind of a joke, really, but for those who don't live around here, Westerly, RI is such a close little city, it really feels like a part of Connecticut. But whatever. It's offical. I win at NaBloPoMo.

Silence Between Friends

True friendship comes when silence between two people is comfortable.  ~Dave Tyson Gentry

Last night I went to see Super 8 with Alisha. I think it might be the first time we have ever gone to see a movie together in the ten or so years we have been friends, which is sort of remarkable because I love going to the movies and try to go as often as I can afford to and have time. It’s one of those things you do with your boyfriend or girlfriend though, you know? And I don’t have one of those, so often I am out of luck on the nights when Elise is with her dad and all of my paired off friends are otherwise engaged. So anyway, it was nice. For one thing, there was not one moment of that movie that I didn’t enjoy. I had been reading reviews of Super 8 before we went to see it and the media was saying it was like a mashup of E.T., The Goonies, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind - and that was pretty much spot on. I felt like there was something really magical about the story, I guess because it focused on the kids and not the adults in the film, which not many new movies do very well anymore. It’s nice to see things like that though, and slip back into what it feels like to be a child filled with wonder and excitement. 

Earlier in the day I was re-reading my old Livejournal, circa 2003-2005. It covered the year leading up to my pregnancy and throughout it, and I stopped writing there soon after Elise was born. I suddenly feel the need to do something to reconnect with some of the people I was good friends with at that time of life, like Dave, Siobhan, and Sara, for instance. I talked about this with Alisha last night - how I miss the old times, how sometimes these days life feels monotonous and boring - because really, it is. Every day is exactly the same, brightened by a few smatterings of newness that comes just by being in the presence of people you don’t see every day. My hermitude has its ups and downs, you see. 

“I don’t want to go back,” Alisha said, and I felt like I had to defend myself but I knew my words fell short.

It’s not that I want to go backwards. I don’t. It’s just that sometimes you lose friends and alienate people all on your own, with no help from outside forces that you can’t control. And that’s annoying, and sometimes it’s sad, and sometimes it’s for the best.. but sometimes people are just GONE and there isn’t anything you can do about it but try your damned hardest to hold on to whatever shred of friendship you can - and I am just not good at that, the long-distance friendship. 

There are so many people that have fallen by the wayside, and for the most part I can just shrug my shoulders and think: “That’s life.” 

But of course, it’s not that way with everyone. Some people you have to hang on to.

Reading the old Livejournal entries, not just mine but some of Alisha and Siobhan’s as well, I feel so shocked, and also relieved and indescribably grateful, that I still have Alisha with me. That even after she had called me a drunk jerk back in 2003, we soldiered on. 

“It’s a good thing that sometimes first impressions don’t last,” she said last night. And it sure is. 

Alisha, not your average blushing bride

A week and a half ago, I got to stand behind this beautiful bride when she wedded her other best friend. 

Sometimes we lose people. Sometimes we keep them. And sometimes the ones we keep are the ones who feel like they’ve always been there, the ones who fit into you like a puzzle piece you never knew you had been missing, the ones you can sit next to in a dark movie theatre, silent for hours, and still feel like you are right where you want to be and who you want to be with, because the best friends are the ones you don’t have to talk to, to have a conversation.