I am lucky to have six of the best girlfriends that a person could ever dream of. I am unlucky, that not a single one lives in my state. What this tends to amount to? Spending all of my vacation time and more than all of my disposable income flying around the country to see them.
Last weekend, emotionally paralyzed by having to sit through my parent's passive-aggressively dissolving marriage (while pretending that nothing is wrong since we're lying to ourselves and the rest of the family) one of my only joys came of being able to spend four consecutive days with my two best-friends from highschool. (They compose the Pittsburgh sector. There is also Florida, North Carolina and Philadelphia, throughout which the rest are scattered. And I have more than just the girls in each of these cities, which makes spending quality time with any one or two people almost impossible without inadvertantly blowing off someone else.)
But in Pittsburgh, last weekend inparticular, everything was harder than it should be, as everything always is. I have a terrible time going back there. No matter what the circumstances. It is either impossible to spend unobstructed time with everyone that I need to, or I'm sad when it's time to leave, or I'm there for a funeral or a tragedy of whatever sort. (Holidays included.)
I used to love going home. The best times were during my years at Gannon. I could drive down for the weekend, whenever the mood struck me (which still, it only sometimes did). My parents, who I'm lucky to say were then and are still my two best friends in this world, would invite my grandma for dinner, and we would discuss the things that are always discussed: Catholicism, politics, family and education. Manderz would come after dinner, I would concoct some kind of fancy martini for my mom and I, and my Dad and Manderz would smoke cigars. He even shared a cuban, once. We'd sit on the front porch, this way, until they retired to bed and Manderz and I took off for the bar. One night of the weekend, I would drive out to Cal to see Dan. We would eat boca burgers and drink vodka Kool-aids and lay around in bed until it was time to go out. She never wanted to drive, so I would usually man the Celica to the nearest dive bar or house party. The next morning, I would drunk-drive home for brunch with my grandparents at the Country Club, entertaining Sunday morning questions about boyfriends and finals. It seemed quite simple, then.
But before that was chaos with my brother. And after that has been every other sort of chaos imaginable. Still, my constants, have always been Manderz and Dan.
I have been leaving them for six years. When I left for college, I left for good. And now, every time that I see them, I know that it is merely a preface to another goodbye. They are the only two of my best friends that I have never lived with. I have never spent quality adulthood with them. They have been growing up, as I have, for six years in a different place. And I am left to weekends under pressure to figure out who they're becomming. (The challenge was all the more compound when they refused to spend any time with each
other, thus dividing my quality time with each in half. But in January, when the baby died, they sat together at the funeral. That they were there at all, has never been something I've gotten over. That they were there, in some way together, changed the dynamic forever.) This time, both painfully aware of the tremendous burden I felt at having to be home, they assumed the roles of the bigger people, and spent time together, with me. And it was perfect. It was not for my sake, so much as the sake of being over whatever else was between them. And it made me forget why it hurt so much to be there.
I've missed them terribly since I left on Monday. Moreso than usual. I think the realization that we will never be closer than this, never again living in the same town, going to the same school, spending time with each other's families, has finally hit me. The realization that these are two people who I've known all my life, whose own lives are in a very different place than mine. It's hard to depart from them in that way, just as it is hard to depart from your childhood ambitions, your parent's marriage, the house you grew up in, Christmas as you knew it, or the dreams that you'd always just hoped would come true.
So I miss my best friends. All of my best friends. But I am lucky to know that when I go home, no matter how different or distant home may become, they will be there with me, as they always have been.
