Bittersweet

After a long week, I stay up late Friday nights to chat on Skype with two of my best friends. In college, we'd walk to class together, eat lunch together, take classes together, study together, sit next to each other in the library and not study together, go to football games together, go on road trips together, travel across the country together, and of course stay up late talking together. But now, we're separated by crazy time zones and, well, life. So every Friday morning they wake up and I stay up late and we Skype. It's not every day, but it's every week, and it's consistent and steady. Even though by Friday night I'm ready to pass out as soon as I walk in the door, I look forward to my late night Skype dates and the laughter and smiles and goofy faces.

As I waited for my friend to come on Skype, I sat on the couch and busted out my Kindle. I'm reading an amazing book right now called, "Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way" by Shauna Niequist (She wrote another book called "Cold Tangerines" which I highly recommend.). The chapter I read tonight was about the author's three-day getaway with her four college girlfriends in a two-bedroom house.

"[B]ecause there are things you can't know, and questions you can't ask, and memories you can't recover via email and voicemail. It was about the being there, about being there to really see what's exactly the same and what's totally different about each one of us." (pg63)

"If you're lucky enough to have your Monica and your Sara and your Kirsten all right in your very own town, I hope you soak it up, and that you lie around in each other's backyards every Saturday afternoon or stay up late on one another's porches three nights a week. But if you're like me, and if those faces are far away, get a weekend on the calendar and get there.

Share your life with the people you love, even if it means saving up for a ticket and going without a few things for a while to make it work. There are enough long lonely days of the same old thing, and if you let enough years pass, and if you let the routine steamroll your life, you'll wake up one day, isolated and weary, and wonder what happened to all those old friends. You'll wonder why all you share is Christmas cards, and why life feels lonely and bone-dry....

So walk across the street, or drive across town, or fly across the country, but don't let really loving friendships become the last item on a long to-do list. Good friendships are like breakfast. You think you're too busy to eat breakfast, but then you find yourself exhausted and cranky halfway through the day, and discover that your attempt to save time totally backfired. In the same way, you can try to go it alone because you don't have time or because your house is too messy to have people over, or because making new friends is like the very worst parts of dating. But halfway through a hard day or a hard week, you'll realize in a flash that you're breathtakingly lonely, and that the Christmas cards aren't much company. Get up, make a phone call, buy a cheap ticket, open your front door.

Because there really is nothing like good friends, like the sounds of their laughter and the tones of their voices and the things they teach us in the quietest, smallest moments." (pg65-66)

I miss my old friends, the ones I left to come here. I miss the constant companionship and ease of friendship. But now, it's an hour, sometimes an hour and a half, once a week. I wish I could buy a cheap ticket and visit every time I felt lonely out here or they needed someone to sit with in the silence. I wish I could. But I can't. But in the late night hours on Friday night, there really is nothing like the sound of their laughter and the tones of their voices. There really is nothing like good friends.