Over the last few years a remarkable thing has happened to me. Specifically to my friendships and the people on the other ends of those friendships. It began, of course, with the event that tears my life into two pieces. Both seperate and distinct: a before and an after, except that unlike in all those makeover shows, the before still seems a bit more appealing. And that event, obviously, is the move.
Before the move I had an abundance of friends. I was never popular, per see, but I was not popular in the best way. Or, as Emily Knox would put it, I was the best kind of popular. The people I considered friends weren't all extremely close friends (though some of them were), for the most part not people I would tell my deepest secrets to or anything. But they were good friends. I could count on them to notice when I missed a day of school, to let me borrow their notes, to always have a partner for group projects and plenty of tables I'd be welcomed at during lunch time. Outside of school there were the friends I had from church, the friends whose houses I'd visit, the friends I went to see movies with. Except for Mich who always lived on the other side of the country (which may as well be the other side of the earth), they were all centrally located in our cluster of small towns. They went to the same church or the same school, or both. I ran into them when I went to Wal-Mart and my parents knew their parents.
Then I moved.
And now, suddenly, the people I count as friends are spread out across the continental US. I've kept in contact with some of my Arizona friends, at least sporadically, but only two of the friendships have survived the effect of time and distance to become friends that I consider close. Apart from them there are girls I've met through Red, located in seperate corners of the US, nowhere near me.
Do I have friends here? Kind of. Not particularly close ones, none who can measure up to the friends I've known for years and years, the friends who know my whole history and with whom explanations are rarely needed. Now I mostly hang out with my little sister although on rare occasions there are girls I go to the mall with or to the movies with. But for the most part my friends are nowhere near here. And I try not to let that bother me. I try to remind myself that no matter where they are, they're the most amazing friends and I'm lucky to have them.
But it's hard to keep that attitude all the time and sometimes I feel lonely even though I know I'm luckier than most, and definitely less alone than most.