soopastryheart

We were an unlikely duo. She had a separate bedroom for her Barbie dolls and a Dalmation. I wore shoes with velcro straps and was still trying to correct my tendency to write s’s backwards. Despite the differences in our cultural and economical backgrounds (with her blonde hair and my jet black, we were the spokeskids of diversity), and without ever understanding why or how we were attracted to each other (but really, is there ever a rational reason when it comes to kids?), we became best friends.

At the end of every school day, we squeaked out “I love you” to each other (and with a hug to boot). When I moved away, we kept in contact via letters (yeah, remember those things with stamps?), a novelty which impressively lasted a few years before eventually coming to an end. I even collected each letter in a tin box, lugging it around with me through several moves before they too met their untimely demise (lost).

I moved and changed schools multiple times in my early years, a circumstance that denied me a companion I could call a lifelong best friend. Even when my family settled in an area where I would eventually finish middle and high school, the typical tenure of a best friend would last a couple of years, or whenever the differences in our interests and personalities became too severe to overcome. Even so, I cherished the ones who held the title, for however long that may have been.

As I grew up (err, grow up?), and as my definition of friendship evolved, I dropped the salutation of best friend from my lexicon. I have a number of close friends, but none that I consider the “best” as such a title suggests that one is greater than all others. Today my relationships with my friends vary in levels of vulnerability, history, and intimacy (some know all the chapters of my life, while some only know the latest issues), but I value each and every one of them, quite dearly.

But there’s always been this one particular friend of mine, one who’s heard more anecdotes about my family, seen more snot fly out of my nose (during regular nervous breakdowns), and known me better than any person (who is not me) really should.

We’ve known each other since middle school, a time where we shared the same weight and penchant for awkwardness. Our friendship remained solid through the decade that followed, which consisted mostly of an inordinate amount of poop talk and laughing at the irony of hating college, an arena in which we had both naively thought would be our saving grace. He held my hand through some of the lowest points of my self-esteem, and in return, I forced him to stop wasting his intelligence and time.

You see, Malcolm had always been the smartest person I’ve ever known – proven time and time again by his board scores, his IQ, and his ability to pick up shit on the fly that I spent an entire quarter learning. He could do anything he wanted, but he chose to knock me flat on my ass when he announced he would join the military. I got over the shock (and initial anger), and supported him the best I could. But understandably, with the distance and limited interaction, we grew apart.

So earlier this month when I received a text letting me know he was flying in the next day, I didn’t hesitate to respond back, What time should I pick you up from the airport?

But the night before we were to see each other, I felt an unfamiliar weariness. So much life had happened in this past year we’ve been apart: he had gotten married and become a father, and I had been picking up my life after deferring my acceptance to med school. We had been growing and learning, on completely separate verticals that I worried that our friendship had been negatively affected. What if we had become strangers, and our meeting would simply be an exchange of polite pleasantries and condensed summaries? How could we possibly catch each other up? How could we start? I couldn’t bear to think about the voids and nulls in our conversation, something neither of us ever experienced in each other’s company.

On the day of his arrival, I messaged him to let him know I was running late, and in response he let me know: No worries, I just took care of some gridlock of my own…out of my butt. My worries had been in vain.

And as you may expect of two people who were catching up on 12+ months of life, the stories came tumbling out, soaked in their usual profane vulgarity. There were no nulls, no voids, no discomfort, and absolutely no overcompensation of manners. And as we fell into our usual forms of multi-task communicating, which is to seamlessly carry on four topics at once, I realized how much I missed him being an active presence in my life. I was reminded of how much he meant to me, how much we had suffered and endured together to be who we were.

He’s being deployed to Afghanistan (seriously, I thought we were done over there) the day after Christmas, and with the addition of junior, I anticipate it’ll be another good while longer before we see each other again. But despite the bittersweet pull our brief reunion has had on me, I realized I didn’t wish for everything to return as they had once been.

Friendships are rarely able to keep their intensities. People move. People get married. People have children. People get careers. People have quarter century life crises, abandon all their previous plans and start over. With obligations to career and romance (and family), it becomes increasingly more difficult to find enough hours in the day for anything else. As a result, friendships take a hit. The closest bonds begin to dissemble, until they become mere footprints of a time when such duties and complications didn’t exist.

So what can we do? Blame people for growing the fuck up? Cry over the good ol’ days? No, we simply accept that friendship, like everything else that’s good and worthwhile, will continue to evolve. We celebrate the fact that we haven’t remained stagnant, the fact that we’ve finally gotten our shit together (or at least, in the right direction). We celebrate our memberships to adulthood.

I miss you, Malcolm. But you and I aren’t the same people we were just a mere year ago. We aren’t where we necessarily thought we’d be, but I like to think that we’re at a place that’s better, because despite all the unexpected changes we’ve gone through, we’ve become better for it. We know ourselves. And we know that the roles we play in each other’s lives can never be manipulated by even the most dramatic of changes. It could be another year or so until we see each other, and undoubtedly, we’ll have gone through another cycle of changes (but I swear to god, if I find out you had another kid via Facebook, I will kill you). But I take comfort in the fact that with us, no matter how much change occurs, so much will remain the same.

And that’s become the barometer in which I measure friendship – the ability to withstand changes and challenges, the miles of distance, and deficiencies in communication – and come out feeling something familiar, something indisputably and irrevocably solid.

Best friends for life. I understand that in its entirety now.