Friendship Obsessions and the Fetus Years of Adulthood:’)
The most platonic romantic moments in the twenty-six years of my life sprawl out in front of me in messy, broken pieces that shine golden under the hot, humid sun. They show me a time in my life when I thought friendships were the most intoxicating thing. Maybe it was because my body ached from growing pains that never stopped coming, but embraced anyway. They were the times I thought I had found my footing, but was oceans away from it. Confident oozed out of me when I was twenty, twenty-one, and twenty-two. The ages I was when the majority of these times were happening. For a while, I thought those fetus years of adulthood was my prime and something I could never reach again, but those years were far from it. They were part of my becoming and I savored every minute of them, but the girl who lived them was filling in her cup with one thing. And it was the blissful, magical, besotted moments I experienced with friends that infatuated and intoxicated me everyday.
Sweat was soaking my long-sleeved t-shirt and old leggings as my teammates and I were running around Cedar Rapids, Iowa at seven am on the morning of Flunk Day 2017, my favorite Coe College tradition. Little did I know that I was about to experience the best Flunk Day of my life, and it would be a day that danced around my thoughts for years to come. A day that happened in March of my sophomore year when I was twenty years old. Some of my teammates were running six miles that day, but as we reached the indoor track, one of my teammates decided she was going to go for another mile. We had planned to hangout on that day during the Flunk Day festivities, and my paranoid self wanted us to end practice at the same time so we could confirm what time we would be meeting up after practice. She was someone I wanted to become better friends with and wanted to spend the day with her. I was terrified of being forgotten, not that my friend made me feel that way, and the night prior, we even had gone to the grocery store to get some supplies. I was just irrationally nervous about the day not panning out how I hoped. Now it was next morning as my running shoes pounded the pavement with anxiousness swirling around me, I was fresh to the idea of being hopelessly in love with college and didn’t want it to slip away from me so I was going to make myself available and present so I ran the extra mile on that over casted Tuesday morning.
After the extra mile, we finished up practice and headed back to our respective dorms. I was so excited to be having Flunk Day plans that I quickly got in the shower and scrubbed off the sweat and grime from practice. But the steaming water coated my skin with desperation. Desperation to have a good day and desperation to keep being in love with my new, college love affair. Music played off the radio in the communal girls bathroom that everyone on my floor shared as if it was trying to distract, but nothing could distract me from the desperation that was crawling up my skin. I rushed back to my dorm room in my towel and started to get ready while obsessively checking my phone. I still had no texts from my friend for what time we would be begin celebrating, but told myself I had showered quickly. She could still be in the shower. I started pulling on my leggings, and tank top. My roommate who was also on the track team was still at the caf with our other teammates so the room felt too quiet for my anxious, excited thoughts. As I heavily coated mascara onto my eyelashes, I dreamed about the minute I would get a Facebook message from my friend (because for some reason we still didn’t have each other’s numbers despite knowing each other for almost a year) saying she was ready to go. Soon enough, my makeup was done and I pulled my leather jacket over my tank top and tapped my phone for the hundredth time. Being the impatient person I am, I pulled up Messenger and typed out a message to my friend for an update.
Almost immediately, she responded that she was getting out of the shower and that she and two other people were going to get food. I looked down at my black Gladiator sandals tightly strapped around my feet. A sign that I was completely ready to go. I typed out a message asking if it was okay if I joined too because I was timid and didn’t want to be too forward by assuming it was an invite. It obviously was so soon I was walking back over towards the indoor track to meet my friends where we would walk to one of their cars and head out to Pancheros, our favorite burrito spot.
A few burritos later, we were back at Coe and pouring Svedka and lemonade into red solo cups as we sat in our friend’s dorm room. We were laughing and taking sips of our drinks. The anxiousness I had felt earlier in the day had slipped away. I was so happy in the moment and knew that something was magical about this moment. I didn’t know how anything would play out, but I couldn’t wait to see what would happen. My heart pounded with excitement because I was in the beginning chapters of one of my first, great friendships.
This was first of many moments like that happened in my very early twentysomething life. Moments throughout the rest of college. Moments when I was spending a summer in Colorado then another in South Dakota and another in Alaska. Each one dripping of youthful times. In Colorado, I fell in love with the nomadic lifestyle. In South Dakota, I couldn’t stop dying my hair. In Alaska, I experienced postgrad life for the first time and stressed about my next steps. But I danced under the strobe lights in a club in Alaska with my coworkers fully high on the thrill of life. I would look at the person in a baseball hat and drinking hot coffee in front of me. It numbed everything, and it was a feeling that was too familiar during those years. Laying hammocks stacked above each other, having deep talks, jumping off a cliff, running miles by the river, hiking up mountains, sitting on each other’s beds, drinking wine out of mugs were all times with friends that took off my coat of uncertainty for the night and numbed the anxiety I felt towards my future.
Every morning, afternoon, evening, and night, I would be chugging fresh water from the Fountain of Youth. Showering in it in fully clothed drenching my athletic clothes and washing my pounds of makeup off. Leaving my mascara running down my cheeks and my t-shirt sticking to my skin as if this type of life was glued to me and never coming off because at the time I didn’t want it too. Or I was afraid it would end because everything always changes and things being concrete doesn’t seem to exist in your twenties. Or maybe it does, but it’s more rare.
Part of my heart breaks for the girl I was in these moments. Someone who was so desperate to have lifelong friends who she could have a good time and create memories with. I wanted people to like and love me. I wanted people to think I was fun, positive, genuine, available, and kind because personally on the good days, I think I am those things, but I wanted other people to see that too. Those moments were part of early adulthood when you’re meeting new people and falling in love with them and the lifestyle. Being in close-quarters, being roommates or neighbors, buying cheap alcohol together, spur of the moment hangs, not fully realizing your actions have consequences, sitting in silence next to each other in college libraries, texting exchanges about the night before, drinking coffee on couches in the late morning, everyone wearing coats of uncertainty, and everyone ranting about figuring out their lives. I was unconfidently, navigating the uncharted waters. Terrified of being rejected and everything ending with the blanket of loneliness to soon follow. My mouth said I never wanted these moments to end, but my heart deep down knew I needed to travel and move around so regardless, their frequency would end. I needed to go after the dreams I always talked about.
Shedding my postgrad coat and hanging it up on the rack next to the previous chapters of my life, college, high school and so forth, I learned to care as much about people as I always did, but not anxiously care to the point it hurt and overwhelmed me. For a couple years, the amount I cared about other people deteriorated me, leading me to think those years from twenty to twenty-two were my prime when they were far from it. As they say, time heals all and as cliché as it sounds, it does.
When I moved to Glasgow, Scotland for grad school, I had never felt so heartbroken and excited at the same time in my life. I didn’t know what to do with it at the time as I walked around the city listening to Kacey Musgraves and discovering Glasgow Green for the first time and buying two books at Waterstones. Deep down, I knew the shambles would come together, but I didn’t know how and I didn’t know it would teach me to shed the coat of anxiety as thick as a Midwest winter coat. Time went on as I went to grad school, met more amazing friends, had the time of my life, kept seeing the world, dragged my many heavy bags out onto the wet sidewalks of Glasgow on moving day, graduated from grad school, gratefully got a job and moved to Manhattan. I finally learned to be in the present and not obsess and stress about the present ending. I could go on my family vacation and not think about the last day the whole week fearing and dreading it. I could text people and not obsessively read over the texts obsessing if I was being nice or genuine or helpful or available enough. I could go visit my friends and not anxiously worry on the way home if they thought I was fun or exciting or mature or relevant enough to be in their lives. Friends from different life stages were going about their lives as so was I. They had their lives. I had mine even when I didn’t think I did. Points of insecurity still poked and prodded at me thinking I was too messy, too crazy, too reckless, or too young, but we should never feel as if we are too much.
Because we are who we are for a reason, and we need to remember that in the anxious, unwanted moments. I went through the fetus years of adulthood obsessing over finding forever people and sometimes, I do still obsess over them, but now I know who I am more. I've accepted that people come into your life for a reason, season or a lifetime. I know I don’t need to obsess over whether people like me or not. I know moments don’t last forever and I know I don’t have to be scared of them ending. I know that I’m impatient and intense. I know that I’m the worst at putting my laundry away. I know that I am nice, and I know how to be alone.
And I’ve accepted all this.
And maybe accepting is just part of growing up.
