Jeans and a going out top
Over the years, I have learned that my post-vacation blues are inevitable, and it is better to plan for and accommodate them than feign surprise at my inability to be productive the day after we come home. I’ve also learned that it helps to make at least one fun plan the week we return. Specifically, something I don’t get to do often and that doesn’t include my family with whom I’ve just spent a week solid.
This year that fun plan was my annual reunion with my college roommates, Kristin and Lindsay. Though they would be miffed to be relegated to just that period of our lives since our friendship has now lasted decades. We don’t live terribly far from each other: one in Boston and the other is only 45 minutes from me in New Jersey. But life lifes and coordinating schedules seems to get harder every year.
However, no matter how infrequently we get together, it just feels easy to be around each other, and I KNOW fun will be had. On the drive down to meet at Lindsay’s house, I thought about why that was. What was it about these friendships that feels simpler than some of my newer friendships? Not that one is better than another, but I could feel my energy shifting toward something more carefree with each passing mile on the Garden State Parkway.
While I am quite open and affable in my writing, I am aware that I am not always as social in person. I worry about what people will think of what I say or do in a way that doesn’t seem to affect me as much from behind a keyboard. But also, with new friends in particular, I feel the need to soften my trauma sharpened edges. I test out my dark humor and see how it is received. I’m aware of not wanting to be a downer and I filter my comments accordingly. Honestly, it’s exhausting.
But when I’m with people who know me - like “shared a bathroom with me” know me – and they have chosen to remain friends with me for years afterward… Friends who have witnessed the rockets and the asteroids and know the source of a dark joke without my having to couch it… Friends who have held my hair back as many times as I’ve held theirs. Well, there just isn’t a need for walls.
But also, being with friends who knew me when I was 20 makes it so much easier to let go of the stressors of 40-something Kelly and return, just for a night, to my 20-year-old self. It’s like taking off your work clothes and putting on something comfortable. There is a familiarity that allows for a quick and unguarded transition that is not happening for me at the school fundraiser.
I've often heard others, and even griped myself, about how difficult it can be to make friends as an adult. And I can't help but wonder if part of the struggle is simply that we are impatient. The friendships we made as children, in college, or in our first jobs were pressure cooked by being together every day. The older we get, the less we find ourselves in similar conditions. Add in adult responsibilities and demands on our time, and it just takes longer to establish friendships with true trust.
This kind of trust is two-fold. There is the trust that the friend will be there when you need them, but also a trust that even if we say or do something stupid, the other person won’t walk away. It’s not that Kristin and Lindsay won’t judge me if I do something stupid - oh, they will. The difference is that they will call me out, make fun of me, and then love me anyway. The comfort in that safety cannot be undervalued.
That’s not to say these long-lasting (and often long-distance) friendships are always ideal. There can still be fights, misunderstandings, or long gaps without contact. And not every old friend is a good friend. But sometimes the Venn diagram intersects, and for one night you get to time travel and reinhabit a simpler version of yourself during a simpler time in your life when jeans and a going out top was the dress code, everything memorable happened after midnight, and nothing important happened before noon.
ID1: Lindsay, Kelly, and Kristin smiling for the camera at a bar in jeans and going out tops circa 2004.
