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.

Perpetually Vacillating

In the past few months I have both felt like I do not know myself anymore and that I have learned so much about who I am. It's contradictory, I know. I have always felt conflicted about acting - whether I should pursue it or whether I should be more... academic. But I always vehemently pursued acting no matter where or what I was doing. There came a point within this past year where I felt like my body kept on moving forward and my self stopped a few feet behind. I began to question why I still act and what it means to me. I don't know. And it is very scary. In fact, for the first time I feel stuck. I doubt the one thing in my entire life that I was so sure about. Sometimes I wonder if this is just growth, if this dilemma actually means that I know more about myself than I ever have before. But really, I have no idea.

In many ways I feel like I don't know what I'm doing here in London and yet I have to be here - that I can't be in any other place but here at this exact moment in my life.

I used to trust that bad situations and bad relationships would without fail end up in disaster. I also used to trust that what I believed was so concrete within me and within my deepest relationships would always remain so. I believed that because nothing had faltered in the past that what was "sure" was invincible. In the past year, and more particularly in the past few weeks and days, my confidence and trust has proved to be faulty. I do believe that this is ultimately a good and positive thing.

Without pain and challenges we are not forced to reevaluate who we are at our core. And without that self-reflection we cannot grow. And no growth in life is ultimately pitiful.

That said, I am an extremely stubborn person. I am also emotionally exhausted. But life does not stop because I'm tired. So I begrudgingly take another challenge to become more at peace with myself. Here we go.