I couldn’t help myself. 🙂
Okay, okay. Something a little more serious. Oh, classic Mariah, brunette, seemingly sane, fully equip with choir and everything. “Anytime You Need a Friend”
Earlier this summer, I had the opportunity to hang out with two friends from Nashville in Chicago (confused yet?). I’ve known one of the ladies since 7th grade and the other since 9th, 13 and 11 years consecutively. Those numbers seem like an eternity to a 25 year old. Just knowing someone for 3 years sounds like a significant amount of time. Over 2 years? Okay, you’re verified as a friend. What does more than a decade mean?
If you were lucky/unlucky enough to live in one area and attend area schools your entire elementary education, you may have people you’ve realistically known since kindergarten. I don’t mean to take anything away from those people but since I didn’t, 7th grade would have to be my longest maintained relationship and it sounds pretty significant to me.
These ladies have known me for (nearly) half of my life. They’ve seen me fight, cry, yell, stare, run, and smile. We’ve seen each other through puberty, AP tests, custody battles, puppy love, first loves, college applications, driver’s licenses, parties, prom, and leaving all of that behind for college. We fell apart during those college years, casually seeing each other when we were all back home but it was never the same. And as sad as that realization may have been, there was still something that made us come back together (hoping). I always wondered what that was exactly. Obviously, we’d all changed and no longer had the classroom to force us together. What was it that made me still call her “my friend”? And actually mean it?
Spending that evening together made me realize what it might be. Intoxicated by wine, nostalgia, good food and ridiculous conversations, we quickly moved past the awkward “so how have you been over the last X years?” Within the time of a rerun of Family Matters, we were back in the place of giddy adolescents. Sure, we’ve all changed, grown up, gotten master’s degrees or “real jobs”, physically filled out, moved past pimples and onto real relationships, taken on new responsibilities and the like. BUT we also all loved not having to worry about that in each other’s company. We reverted to gossiping, giggling, smart-ass 15-year-olds, fueled by slumber party antics. Just trying to take a group picture at the end of the night was a monumental feat. We simply could not stop laughing. And it felt SO good. 🙂 Laughing at nothing but ourselves.
Anyway, that evening made me realize why we should, or at least why I still do, hold onto these types of friendships for so long. It’s not because these people really play a big role in your life now. I’m not saying they’re not important or that they couldn’t reclaim their roles of indispensable friends. It’s just that your life operates just fine without their daily/weekly/monthly interaction. But when you are with them you can become a person you haven’t been for a long time, since you really knew each other. You get to not be a “real” grown up. You get to talk about gossip, not just politics, outfits, not just bills, crushes, not just relationships, life, not just drama. These are the people that knew you when you didn’t know any better AND still liked you. These are the friends who knew you pre-filter, pre-adult judgment, pre-responsibilities, pre-grown up.
All other friends I’ve made since these ladies and our core/clique have known me in some part of my transition from child to adult. Sure, these types of “pure” friendships are possible with people you meet past the age of , say, 16. But they require a type of trust we learn to not give so freely as we get older. For that reason, there may never be anything like the relationships you have/had with the people who knew the child who knew everything, rather than the adult who realizes they know very little.
Thankful people still liked me when I didn’t know any better,
Jo’van
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The Truth: According to Jo'van 
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