#4: My friends

It's safe to say - that I'm grateful for my friends, or I wouldn't choose to have them in my life.  If I weren't grateful for a particular friend, I wouldn't consider that person a friend - rather someone that I tolerate due to circumstances of our lives that collide. 

I don't know if this is just what happens when we're plopped down in a new city to work and go to school (perhaps some of my friends who legit went 'away' to college can answer this), but it's hard sometimes to branch out and create new relationships when we have 1. so much shit going on and 2. friends back home.  I think last year I sort of forgot to live in Columbus.  Even if I only went home once per quarter, that was still "home" and where my friends were.  In between I went through the motions - went to class, work, even out occasionally - but it was all just a sort of liminal space, somewhere to hang out in between the times I could be where I actually wanted to be.

I'm grateful that my dumbass self eventually figured out I needed to have a life and people here too.  I mean, by default in my grad program, I sort of automatically had friends, but I don't know about friendships.  That takes more work, I think, and perhaps a commitment to living a life in Ohio (never thought that would happen...).  

Not to say that I could ever, ever live without people from home.  I had the fortune of a long g-chat conversation catch up session with Carolyn, my best friend from college, a couple days ago, and I'd be lying if I said it hadn't made me consider dropping out of school just to be home with the people I love.  Carolyn, though she probably doesn't know it yet, convinced me to go vegan in this conversation.   I had been toying with the idea for the better part of a year, but unwilling to commit because... I hate committing.

Carolyn and I chatted about bell hooks, one writer that we both appreciate, as we have a mutual interest in economics and capitalism and how that relates to different kinds of social issues.   Suffice it to say bell hooks is a genius on these subjects; some of my other favorite feminist authors fail to connect the dots between the economy and social issues.  Carolyn and I had a long chat about individualism and consumerism, and I decided when reflecting on this conversation that part of my struggle with committing to veganism is that I have this consumerist individualist mentality that I should just buy whatever I want all the time.  Nevermind that I've been philosophically committed to the idea of not using animal products for a long time, at the end of the day, I'm an American - and I do what I want when I want without regard to the environment, or poor starving people throughout the world, (or my nearly unmanageable credit card bills).

As we critiqued the individualistic values of our culture, I think about how lucky I am to have not just Carolyn, but all of my socially aware friends that I can have intellectual conversations with.  For instance, as I watched the latest episode of Desperate Housewives with TJ in his office on Friday, we began to chat about the new black housewife and how she was legitimized by her level of class and "whiteness" - how the same character would never make it on the show if she were poor, or wore burglar clothes.   Even the recent storyline of Susan selling the image of herself in lingerie while cleaning - she's obviously ashamed of it, but thinks she should just do what she needs to do to make enough  money to be back with her upper middle class friends on Wisteria Lane.  Susan would be read entirely differently, in my opinion, were she a racial minority - now it's funny and cute that she'll do whatever she needs to be part of the class she wants to be a part of again (white people are entitled to that, right?), but were she black or latino trying to climb her way back into a privileged economic class, her ways would be downright wrong - culturally we'd expect her to work 4 or 5 jobs to make her mortgage payment rather than *gasp* show her tits.  On a side note: I hope Terri Hatcher's character jumps off a bridge and dies.  I hate Susan.  But that's neither here nor there.

Oh right! My friends.  I love them.  Last night I had a chat with Matt that resulted in me crying, as I always cry and began to share some emotional baggage with him.  Now, he can tell you what he will about not having feelings and stuff - but I'm just going to call him out on it - he loves his friends.  And he's not the only one - nearly all of my friends have seen me cry, and as someone who becomes immensely uncomfortable and awkward around crying people, I can appreciate the amount of effort and tolerance it must take to be my friend sometimes.  

Last night at the bar, I commanded Jenn to do a lap around the bar and find me a girl.  She came back several minutes later, reporting that no one was good enough for me. Regardless of whether this was true - I was thinking about how nice it is to have friends that have standards on my behalf.  Most people have heard the quote that friends are the family you choose - and it's so true.  I've thought about this concept many times in my life, as despite my many bad choices in other arenas of my life, I am quite good at choosing worthwhile people to be my friends.  For the first time yesterday though, I found myself thinking not just about how I chose them, but also how they chose me.  And I'm grateful to my friends for that - lord knows I am not an easy person to deal with all the time.