Blog #331: Long-term Friends

As I sat ingesting copious amounts of spicy chana masala and garlic naan (yes, I cheated and had some gluten tonight), two incredibly familiar faces smiled at me from across the table and told stories from the past six months of their lives.

These two faces belonged to none other than Courtney and Aundrea, my two closest friends from early childhood and through high school. We sat eating, talking, and laughing for nearly two hours, and we probably would have stayed longer had it not been for our waitress repeatedly cleaning the table next to us to signal she was shutting down the restaurant.

As the conversation flowed like it has for basically our entire lives, I just marveled at the fact that I could have such good friends to return to. We all lead pretty different and separate lives now, but when we get together again, we hardly skip a beat. Seemingly the only difference now is that instead of talking about our high school issues, we tell each other about the countries we've been to, the internships we've had, or the projects we've completed. We talk about our siblings and their romantic lives (weddings! kids!), our hopes for the future, our parents' plans to move. We laugh about all the shenanigans we've gotten in together.

How nice it is to return to something that lasts over time.

As I sat there in such great company, I also thought about my plans for tomorrow to fly to Reno and do the exact same thing.

I'll be reuniting with some of my closest friends from my India program, and I've been waiting for this for a long time. These women are so important to me.

And, when I return to Iowa, I'll get to be together again with some of my closest friends that Morningside brought to me. I am just so lucky.

Tomorrow, I'm sure the past seven months of separation will vanish away as we talk and laugh and cry (there will absolutely be crying), and we'll get to spend a week making new memories. I'm so excited.

I guess what I'm the most grateful for is the sustained nature of these friendships. It's easy to be friends with someone when you're around them most every day, but it's much tougher to sustain that relationship when you part. These reunions I have and will encounter are proof that these friendships I'm so lucky to have are valuable and able to be sustained. That's just so cool to me.

I've met so many good people in my life, and it's just so cool that I get to be friends with so many of them. Sometimes maintaining a friendship can be difficult over time, but it is so so worth it. This reunion just proved it once more.