Have you ever met someone and instantly known you would be
friends forever? And before you even get to those deep places that long term
friendships require, you know that you could call them ugly crying at 4 am and
that they would not only listen, but would drive to a 24 hour Walgreens, pick
up an emergency carton of Ben and Jerry’s and knock on your door while cradling
the cell phone, ice cream and whatever left over alcohol she had just laying
around? The type of someone that even though they move to a completely
different time zone and work schedules require more text conversations than
actual phone interactions, you hop on a 3:30 am flight shaking with excitement
and when you land she is wearing the exact same outfit you are and you just
look at each other with tear lined eyes and laugh? That. That, my friend, is
the true sign of someone who fills your cup. Someone who fills a void in you
that keeps you going.
My best friend and I met in 2007. We picked each other up in
a bar on a “best friend blind date” as we like to call it. She was moving to
Memphis for her Music Therapy internship and was close friends with one of my
husband and my best friends. We only lived in the same location for a year, but
those short twelve months solidified us in each other’s lives forever. She
would drive 7 hours the day I went into labor with my oldest daughter to be one
of the first to hold her. I would arrive on her doorstep in Atlanta with my
husband and 8 month old just because I missed her face and needed to hug her. I
would be where she would run at the end of a long term relationship because I
was home to her and she was safe to heal under my roof for as long as that
healing required.
This weekend was much needed on both of our ends. Her
thirtieth birthday is this week and she is working through the necessary
emotions that the change of decades requires. I am knee deep in working mommy
hood and on the verge of opening a new business. Things are crazy, chaotic,
stressful and leaving us both feeling defeated and deflated. We decided months
ago that I would take this trip solo. To find my me-ness I had to be alone, to rediscover
the me I am without the responsibilities of being a Mommy, wife, and employee.
The second I got off the plane and saw her face I began to feel myself bubbling
back to the surface. There are people in your life who just do that. People who
your soul immediately recognizes and thanks you for being near. People who know
you so much better than you know yourself and can remind you with only a hug of
the perfect tightness.
We spent the first day walking the beach discovering little
secret sections free from the throngs of usual tourists and beachcombers. We
walked along a beach path catching up on surface level stuff and laughing about
this memory or that new development. We found a sunny patch, laid our blanket
down, pulled out our airplane bottles and went to work. Alcohol, music, and an
incredible best friend is really all a girl needs in life, of this I am sure.
I am not great about venting, about letting everything out
and allowing people to peak behind my sunny disposition. I just never have been
that girl. I hate troubling anyone else with my “petty” problems. I’m a fixer
first and foremost. I enjoy my role in life and hate the idea of forgoing that
roll and being the fixee instead. My problem here in this relationship is that this
little piece of my personality doesn’t faze my best friend one bit. Bitch
seriously took a vow of silence until I cried. Literally. She would not speak a word until I was crying. And we
aren’t talking single tear Lauren Conrad style, but like ugly puffy face
hyperventilating crying. Who does that?!?!?!! My best friend does that. Because
she knows me. She knows that I would
rather listen to your problems and help find solutions or just let you vent
than trouble you with my own. And she knows that if she gives me even a little
room I’ll swing off the topic of me so fast we won’t even realize the subject
changed until we’re too deep. So she sat there. Quiet. Listening to me.
Sometimes I would stop and we’d listen to the music and the waves and the
silence. But then I would start again, going deeper and deeper to the roots of
my stress. She listened. She sat quietly only with a head nod here and half
smile there. And finally, the tears came
and the truth laid out in front of us. The fear, the stress, it all tumbled
out. And there I was. Just that easy, she’d found me again. The freedom that
came from that release and the conversations that followed was palpable. By the
time we got back to the car I felt lighter, laughed harder and felt more full
of life and love than I had in weeks. The weekend that followed was a whirlwind of
laughter and love and joy and peace. My cup was full.
These tough love moments are not unique to my friendship.
You have them too. You were probably reading this thinking about her (or him or
them). And maybe you haven’t been in the same location lately. And maybe you
are feeling like you aren’t the same woman you were before kids or school or
other friends beat you down. Maybe you are feeling like you have nothing left
to give, that your cup is empty. Go to your person. Go to the person who
reminds you of who you are, who you were, and who you are yet to be. Physically.
Take a week, or a weekend, or a day, or an hour and just go. Maybe you are
lucky and that person is just up the street, or, maybe you have to board a
flight and endure the stinky person next to you in coach who decided that yes,
that breakfast burrito will be fabulous at 3:30 in the morning, (you’re welcome
US Airways flight 2724!) but go. Yes, it is hard to break away. Yes, it is hard
to scrape together the money. Yes, it is hard.
But you know what? It’s worth it. YOU are worth it. That girl who smiled so freely before circumstances
changed is still there inside of you, and she
is worth it too. Go. Fill your cup.
-SS Amber P
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