So there I was, procrastinating leaving the rec and I was given the opportunity to giggle with one of our pro-staff over a homemade salad and redneck jokes about Illinois. Sometimes I feel like the stereotypes I moved to Illinois with are so a part of my reality that I forget they aren't all true. Sometimes I lean on those stereotypes because it makes this whirlwind of SoIll make more sense. Sometimes they just help to make light of everything that doesn't make sense but is SOOO real in so many ways. So there we are, eating a "salad" (it contained lettuce but there was so much bacon and cheese that it couldn't have been healthy by ANY means...delicious? Yes! Healthy? Not a chance!) giggling about the hipster nature of Portland versus the redneck nature of Southern Illinois when he mentions that part of the reason he moved there from South Carolina was because at least in SoIll he got to keep his teeth.
I almost died. I was laughing so hard I couldn't stop. It felt normal. I felt normal. For the first time in a week I didn't feel like I was suffocating.
It's weird to think of how much a tight hug and a good laugh can change everything for me. There is a healing nature to cuddle puddles, blanket forts, and inside jokes. I think that's what I live on. Maybe that's it. Some people live on unicorns, rainbows and rose colored glasses. Others find solace in structure, consistency, and predictability. While others, like me, could be perfectly happy going through every day with nothing but cuddle puddles, blanket forts, random adventures, and inside jokes. Yep that must be it. Maybe that's what it is about being with my friends.
I can't help but think about while I was home. Me and my girls (and the boy) went to Fire on the Mountain. It's always a mystical mess when the four of us girls are together. It's like throwing philosophical conversations, existential life crisises, 13 year old gossip sessions, beer and cuddling all into a blender and leaving the lid off. Whatever flies out is what happens. It's AMAZING! Potentially my favorite thing in the entire world it could be argued. It's always funny when we're together cause I never know what is going to happen. I've been asked before what we're going to do and I never know. It seems even if there is a plan somehow it always strays from what I expected and it's always exactly as it should be. I just remember leaving and the boy telling me that the four of us together was "a lot". Truly the best way to describe it. The experience of us I guess.... a lot.
My friendship with those girls is so much a part of who I am. That's part of what made leaving Portland so hard... I had to leave them behind not knowing when the four of us would be in one place again. These three people that have become my rocks when things are hard and my wings when I needed to get away. I couldn't imagine life without them. I don't ever want to have to imagine life without them because it pretty much just would be awful so that's never going to be a thing that happens.
When I found out about Laura's accident over spring break (talked about it a while back) I was driving away from my parents house on the way to the twins house. I called my mom while I was on the freeway, in shock, choking on my tears and my words, struggling to breathe and acknowledge the horror that was happening and how scared I was. It's a little crazy to think of cause I feel like any other situation my mom would have told me to come home because I would always want to be with my mom when something like that happened, but she didn't. She just told me to text her when I got there because she knew, maybe more than I did, that being with my girls, my best friends, was the only place that I was going to be able to handle everything that was happening. That night was hard, we drank (maybe too much, maybe just enough, who knows), we laughed, we fought, we cried and at the end of the night we all snuggled into beds and none of us spent the night alone. I feel like that one night was the perfect scene of our friendship. No one spends the night alone. None of us are ever alone. As long as I have those girls everything will be alright.
When I moved out here. When my world came shattering to pieces weeks after I got here and I was alone. When I was homesick and was struggling to get out of bed each morning. Sure I called my mom, we talk every day, everyone knows that, we always have and always will. But at 2am when I couldn't sleep and my brain was running, or I was on the way home from work and wanted to share something my girls were the ones I called. They were the ones that offered to fly out to po-dunk southern illinois if I needed them here. When things went to shit for my birthday and I had to send home the person nearest to my heart we planned a ridiculous snuggle puddle when I got home to make it better.
I can't imagine going back to Portland and not having the four of us all be together. Ever since the first time we were all together something just made sense. It's like all the friends that I made that led me to them made sense. Don't take this as not valuing the friends and people that got me to that point because those are some of my most valued relationships, but something clicked in me and caused me to just take a deep breathe that first time because it made sense. I love them to the moon and back again. As hard as it is knowing that I don't know when we'll be in Portland together again, I know that these are people that will be in my life forever. I want them there the day I get married (god help us if that happens), helping my kids get into trouble and telling "oh trust us your mom can't get mad cause when she was your age...." stories, and drinking margaritas on my patio while our kids get into shit and eat dirt (yes my kids will cause hell, I already know). They are my girls. That's all there is to it.
Also, it just kinda makes sense that these are the only pictures I have of me and my girls from my last trip home and that we look like SPAZZES in all of them. Fuck I love these ladies and may we never be normal and may we always just be "a lot"!
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