It's the week of Thanksgiving. It's also almost the end of the term here at PSU. This means that people will be graduating. When people graduate, they tend to fly away. They go and start their careers, move to different places, and make new friends. It's that last word that I want to talk about today. Friends. In honor of Thanksgiving, I would love to talk about what I’m most thankful for, my friends. I’ll explore how I’ve been as a friend, I’ll talk about it what I cherish about my friends, and finally, my hopes for these friendships going forward.
Friendship is something that we all gain, and lose in our lives. Sometimes we are great friends, and sometimes we are bad friends. It happens. I've been both. I'm currently both. There are probably people who are reading this right now, who I have not talked to in a long time. Why? I don't know. It's not that I don't care about these people, but it's just not something that is always on my mind. When it is on my mind, I get anxiety that it will be too weird, or awkward to text these people out of the blue. I know that's absurd, but it's a real thing that has stopped me. And I'm deeply afraid that it will happen again. I'm terrified that in a few months, I will completely lose contact with people. Because this already happened to me this year. There is a group of friends I made last year that I now don't really talk to. A few of them have moved away, but I still have made little effort to catch up with them. It's like as soon as people move, I assume they don't exist. It's like the show got cancelled, and those characters are no longer real. It sucks. But I hope that I've learned from this, and will do everything I can to make sure it never happens again. I don't want to keep losing little pieces of joy. What they bring to the table is too valuable to simply fade away. Let’s now move in to what makes that true.
I love that my friends put up with my awkwardness. It can sometimes be difficult to maintain a conversation with me. Socializing is not my strong suit, hence why I write this newsletter. (Also, reading this out loud to each individual person would be exhausting.) But they stick with me. They could easily just let me simmer in the silence, but they don’t. They let me be myself. They actually care about what I have to say, and they think I'm funny. (At least I hope so. If not, they've done a great job pretending. Good job, guys. I'm really proud.) I say a lot of weird stuff. And I'm honestly surprised when other people enjoy it. But the best part of all this, is that I'm comfortable enough to say those things around them. It's wonderful.
Often, my favorite thing about people is their laugh. A person's laugh is one of the rare moments where people show their true selves. It's like their own little song. I want to put all my friends laughs on a Spotify Playlist. (Is that creepy? Or corny? Or both?)I love when we all laugh together. The collective laugh is my favorite thing. It’s something that we all build together, and that no one else can have. I wish I could record those laughs and play them back whenever I wanted to. I bet I would be able to know exactly what we were talking about, simply based on the laugh.
I tend to think about the future a lot. And a question that's been on my mind recently is, how will I look back on these people 50 years from now? Will I remember their names? Will I remember their faces? Will I remember all the good times we had? Will I remember the little things? Will I have been there for the big moments in their lives? Will I incorporate them into bedtime stories for my children, or will my children know and love them? If they move away, will I continue to write them, or will the pen never move? I hope the answer is yes to all of those questions. I don't want to catch up with my friends through a Christmas letter once a year. I want to be one of the people they talk about in the letter.
My friends have completely changed how I see things. Inside jokes have altered how I see many words. When I walk by certain parts of Portland, I'm immediately transported back to when I was there with my friends. I feel their presence when I'm at those places. That's how I know that they will always be with me. All I want to do is make weird jokes, chime in with sarcastic comments, and laugh. My friends let me do all of those things. And I can't thank them enough for it.
Thank you.
Each and every one of you mean the world to me. All of you have provided me with something that I will carry for the rest of my life. Some have given me confidence, some have given me knowledge, some have given me advice, some have given me new music, some have given me clothes, some have given me rides home, some have given me sweet discounts at stores, some, but not all, have given me their Netflix password, some, if not all of them, have told me they did not think what I just said was funny by way of their silence, but all of them have given me memories, laughter, and a space for me to be myself. I am very thankful for them this holiday season, and I will be thankful for them for all holiday seasons to come.
See you next week.
Credits:
Created with images by kaboompics - "food lunch table salad health fit dinner"