Thank You For Existing With Me Here Today

Transitions do weird things to me--I'm sentimental, then I'm scared, then I realize I'm relieved to stop doing the first thing I was moaning about in the first place. I may be an extreme liberal, but personal change has always scared the s*** out of me. Based on my reaction to transitioning from State High to Penn State, you would have thought I was jetting off to the other side of the world.

If that's the case, flights back home are mad cheap.

In true Kira fashion, I've been reflecting on my life in State College about six months prematurely (I've also been freaking out about what to do post-graduation six months prematurely, but let's pretend that never happened). All of a sudden, I've reflected on 22 years of passive aggressive post-it notes loving times with family and friends, and written exactly 0% of a paper that's due in a week. Because #priorities.

My biggest concern has always been leaving the people that I encounter, that I love, that I call myself close to. I've never dealt well with transient friendships. I was a wreck basically every day at Shoshoni because everyone kept leaving. I've considered kidnapping my best friends and taking them with me to Colorado, or Korea, or wherever I may end up next. I've kept these same friendships for so long, it seems almost impossible to function without them. I think I'm just getting out of the denial period in which I convince myself that my friends and I will live in a house made of chocolate together.

 In an almost poetic state, I ended up learning about the feasibility and importance of leaving behind certain people/experiences/desires through the re-emergence of one friend from high school and another from fifteen years ago. In the course of one summer, I was enthralled with the idea of letting these two guys pull me out of my regular State College bubble, terrified of the weird and uncomfortable adventures they led me on, and thrown into a fit of rage when everything went to hell and they stopped speaking to me.

(Without going into too much detail, it was essentially a story of boy-meets-girl, boy-and-girl-have-awkward-conversations, boy-gets-into-screaming-match-with-girl-and-girl's-roommates).

All while studying for the GRE's. What an unforgettable summer.

For the longest time, I regretted ever coming into contact with these people. I wanted to forget ever spending time with anyone who disrupted my relationship with my established friend group, to scream at them for repeatedly disappearing and re-appearing when convenient.

Coincidentally, this was also the time that I wanted more chocolate than I could ever handle.

However, upon further reflection, I've grown less angry at these people and at this situation. Sure, this is partly due to time, but I've also realized that without these ephemeral friendships, I wouldn't know how to properly deal with saying goodbye. In a messed-up, paradoxical sense, the relationships that brought out my worst allowed me to learn how to grow into my best.

Pure poetry, if you ask me.

Okay so it wasn't that straightforward, but my point is (and I do have one) that it turns out that those picture-book ideals about "everyone teaching a lesson" were right. Even the most tumultuous or temporary relationships serve some sort of purpose--it's just hard to see that purpose if you're still in them. As my wise friend Megan once said about the role others may play, "maybe they're a scene, maybe they're a chapter, maybe they're the goddamn intermission."

Intermissions serve a purpose, too. They're where you get the most candy.

While this past summer is an example of an extreme falling-out, I've slowly been able to apply the same concepts to less dramatic encounters. I've realized that temporary relationships don't equal a failed novel--they're more akin to an interesting chapter.

While it's certainly going to be much harder to apply that logic to friendships that have kept me sane for 10+ years, it makes the move away from home that much less daunting.

So for the intermissions and chapters alike, thank you for existing with me here today.

Namaste