On the subject of Teresa, there are some bright, magnanimous memories, and there are also some really terrible ones. For a little over a year, she was my best friend. Lucy and I weren't the closest of friends junior year and we remedied a good portion of that senior year, but it was Teresa that I bonded most with. Coco was there, too, but Reesa and I were together more often and Coco was busy with her romantic interests.
It's kind of funny how it all worked out. Reesa always saved time for her friends when she was dating Nick. I wasn't the biggest fan of him (and he turned into a giant d-bag once they were really, officially over), but he wasn't the most interesting person, so it was easy for her to divide up her time between him and friends and family.
At my "good riddance" party the day before I left for my 5 day roadtrip across the continental US, Coco cried when she said goodbye to me. I only cried when I said goodbye to Teresa, even though she was going the same way 19 days after me.
That was when everything changed. I didn't even know what was happening until it was all over.
I made all sorts of new friends and new best friends, and I did my best to keep my old friends, too. Maybe I changed. I don't really know. Maybe I was just adapting. Maybe that's what Teresa did, too.
Looking through the old "love" book we used to write in, I could see that we had interesting and at least semi-thoughtful conversations. Sometimes it was just funny stuff, or random stuff, but most of the time, it was stuff that really mattered to us.
At some point during our first year in college, those conversations stopped. When I wanted or needed to say something that mattered, she had to talk about boys. Or sex. Or how what's-his-face said such and such to her and how that made her want to drop her pants.
When I got back to this coast during the summer, I found out how often she'd lied to me to keep me from hating her or being disappointed in her. And honestly, if she'd just been up front about it, I would've been angry, but at least I would still have had some respect for her character.
Coco, Nelle and I confronted her about her behavior last summer, too. She promised to be different, and with her boyfriend on the east coast, she was different. She was herself. Or, well, one version of herself. I can't pretend I don't know how people edit their social selves to keep it separate from their alone selves. But either way, she was back to "normal" and we were all pretty happy about it. But in the back of our minds we knew, the moment she went back there, she'd just fall back into that new persona and probably get worse.
We were right.
At first, I only got a few texts from her, sometimes of pictures of her and Ty, or her new haircut, and the like. Then there was nothing. For about five months, there was complete silence. One day, I got a text from her saying she had a box in my grandparents' storage and could I please be her owl and let my grandparents know she wanted it back. I gave her my grandparents' number and told her to figure it out herself. After that, I didn't hear anything else from her until the day I announced on facebook that I was going back to PA for spring break. We talked a little about it, she brought up the storage thing again ('cause she just never got around to doing anything about it), and that was the end of it.
I was shocked, therefore, when I looked on facebook yesterday and discovered that she'd tagged me in a note titled "This is probably wayyy long overdue..." She addressed about 8 of us directly, and in the letter to me she said she knew what I thought had happened to our friendship.
It's not exactly hard to figure out. She dropped her dignity with her pants and I didn't bother to keep in contact. I would've just heard the same sex stories over and over again. Why bother?
Apparently, though, she's turning over a new leaf. Again.
I still love her, even if I have to think back to all the good times we had senior year to acknowledge it, but I can't help but wonder: How long will it last THIS time...?
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Grass Is Greener
Wrote this the Wednesday night of my departure from Etown and it's taken this long for Blogger to stop being a giant bag of douche:
I cried again when I left. It was harder than the first time when I still held the belief that I would be back in just a few short months. It was so much harder to say goodbye while thinking of how I had no idea if I could ever come back. I don’t just mean for a visit, either. Visits just aren’t good enough. They aren’t good enough for me and they aren’t good enough for these people I’ve grown to call my “other family.” It feels wrong to just visit them. Like I’m just teasing. Like I’m not serious about it. Like I don’t think, at least once a day, how much I would do anything to go back and stay.
I wish I was exaggerating. I wish it wasn’t a constant longing. I wish I didn’t have to wake up every morning and realize that I’m in a bedroom, alone, in my parents’ house on the other side of the country from the room I should be in. The room that I shared with Elisabeth, that served as my home for a year, that contained so many memories and so much love and laughter. That is the room I should be in when I wake up every day. But it’s not.
And what’s holding me back? What on earth could keep me from the one place where I really, truly belong? It’s the same thing we all hear in news on a daily basis. If only we all had a little more money, everything would be better.
“The love of money is the root of all evil.” I’ve known this since I was old enough to sit and pay attention in Sunday school. I won’t lie, I love money. I love having it. Having money means freedom. I can buy whatever I want, go wherever I want, see whatever I want. Absolute freedom. Freedom comes with a cost, and it’s the everyday currency. It’s not lives or wars or peace treaties. When it all comes down to it, it’s money. Money, money, money. And let me tell you, if I had $50,000, there’s only one place I would be.
People ask me all the time how I ended up there. How could a girl, born and raised in San Diego, California, a city girl, choose to live in a place that is literally in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by dairy farms and the occasional McDonalds? When people ask me this it’s because they don’t get it. I mean, they ask me because they think it’s ridiculous. San Diego has near-perfect climate, four beaches within a thirty-mile radius, beautiful scenery and sunshine 52 weeks of the year. They honestly don’t get it.
They don’t get that San Diego is always the same. That the people are always the same, narrow-minded, judgmental people. That the streets are always the same. That the idiots are always the same. Don’t they get it? Don’t they understand what it’s like to be bored? Don’t they understand that the novelty of going to the same places and seeing all the same faces and driving all the same streets all the time wears off and becomes…boring? They may think cow towns are boring, but I have to disagree. Sure, you may have to drive a little further to find a mall or a good restaurant or a Wawa, but adventures happen on the way there. Yeah, you might get snowed in once or twice a year, but who doesn’t enjoy a little time off from studying to go play in the snow?
My point is, people may think San Diego is exciting, but I think having different adventures every day, on the road, in the dorms, around the town…all that is way more exciting. It requires imagination, patience and good humor. It requires people who are all vastly different, yet all equally good.
So is it really a ridiculous concept? Do you really need to ask me why I’m so desperate to come back?
I think the answer is fairly obvious. I suppose the grass may look greener on the other side, but, honey, I’ve been on both sides of the fence and I can tell you for certain that the grass is greener in Elizabethtown.
I cried again when I left. It was harder than the first time when I still held the belief that I would be back in just a few short months. It was so much harder to say goodbye while thinking of how I had no idea if I could ever come back. I don’t just mean for a visit, either. Visits just aren’t good enough. They aren’t good enough for me and they aren’t good enough for these people I’ve grown to call my “other family.” It feels wrong to just visit them. Like I’m just teasing. Like I’m not serious about it. Like I don’t think, at least once a day, how much I would do anything to go back and stay.
I wish I was exaggerating. I wish it wasn’t a constant longing. I wish I didn’t have to wake up every morning and realize that I’m in a bedroom, alone, in my parents’ house on the other side of the country from the room I should be in. The room that I shared with Elisabeth, that served as my home for a year, that contained so many memories and so much love and laughter. That is the room I should be in when I wake up every day. But it’s not.
And what’s holding me back? What on earth could keep me from the one place where I really, truly belong? It’s the same thing we all hear in news on a daily basis. If only we all had a little more money, everything would be better.
“The love of money is the root of all evil.” I’ve known this since I was old enough to sit and pay attention in Sunday school. I won’t lie, I love money. I love having it. Having money means freedom. I can buy whatever I want, go wherever I want, see whatever I want. Absolute freedom. Freedom comes with a cost, and it’s the everyday currency. It’s not lives or wars or peace treaties. When it all comes down to it, it’s money. Money, money, money. And let me tell you, if I had $50,000, there’s only one place I would be.
People ask me all the time how I ended up there. How could a girl, born and raised in San Diego, California, a city girl, choose to live in a place that is literally in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by dairy farms and the occasional McDonalds? When people ask me this it’s because they don’t get it. I mean, they ask me because they think it’s ridiculous. San Diego has near-perfect climate, four beaches within a thirty-mile radius, beautiful scenery and sunshine 52 weeks of the year. They honestly don’t get it.
They don’t get that San Diego is always the same. That the people are always the same, narrow-minded, judgmental people. That the streets are always the same. That the idiots are always the same. Don’t they get it? Don’t they understand what it’s like to be bored? Don’t they understand that the novelty of going to the same places and seeing all the same faces and driving all the same streets all the time wears off and becomes…boring? They may think cow towns are boring, but I have to disagree. Sure, you may have to drive a little further to find a mall or a good restaurant or a Wawa, but adventures happen on the way there. Yeah, you might get snowed in once or twice a year, but who doesn’t enjoy a little time off from studying to go play in the snow?
My point is, people may think San Diego is exciting, but I think having different adventures every day, on the road, in the dorms, around the town…all that is way more exciting. It requires imagination, patience and good humor. It requires people who are all vastly different, yet all equally good.
So is it really a ridiculous concept? Do you really need to ask me why I’m so desperate to come back?
I think the answer is fairly obvious. I suppose the grass may look greener on the other side, but, honey, I’ve been on both sides of the fence and I can tell you for certain that the grass is greener in Elizabethtown.
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