Friends

While I procrastinate from my MOUNDS of reading I have to do for this week, I thought I would share something that moved me this past weekend and made me think: friends.

Friends, we all have them in some capacity or another, and each friend means something different.  As my dad says, 'we can have different friends for different reasons' (a friend who you always like to go to the movies with, or out to drinks, or to just TALK, or those catch-all friends).  But sometimes, especially as I am back in New York at Barnard from a year away, I'm truly moved by how friendships are able to subsist over time and how just a four minute or forty minute conversation can truly make think how happy I am to have met these people.

And then it got me thinking - the friends we make, like life, are very much due to chance.  What would have happened if I hadn't started talking to my Stagedoor roommate?  Or if I hadn't decided to go on a walk with that one girl down the hall freshman year to the movies?  Or if I hadn't turned around and talked to the group of teenagers behind me in rehearsal? Or if circumstances were different: What would have happened if I hadn't auditioned for that musical at UCL? Or if I hadn't gone to Hathaway Brown and began divulging my love for Lord of the Rings?

But it's not just chance, it's about effort - making that bold move to say - let's go see that movie, or why don't we hang out?  And it's scary.  But I look back at the friends I have now and think: Thank GOD that this is how things worked out.

Yesterday night, I Skyped with two of my closest friends who, coincidentally, I met in London.  Speaking to them on Skype was like a part of me was awakened - a part of me that I've missed.  The laughter, the quick witted remarks, and the reminder that there was a time last year where most of my time was spent with these two people and that they became my family.  I think of these two people with such fondness and love - because I feel like they represent a friendship unlike any that I have had.  Maybe it's just that we all 'got' each other, or that they became my support group when I was in a country alone, but after talking to them yesterday I wanted to jump on a plane again just to be with them.  But also knew, that while I missed the times we had and the ability to see them everyday, that this was a friendship that would last for a VERY long time.

It's a wonderful thing when friendships become family.  When that happens all I can say is that I am truly truly blessed.

Think about your friends... they truly are remarkable.