You were attached at the hip in college. But how do you reconcile your drastically different grown-up experiences?
With one of us in Richmond, one in New York, and one in D.C., each with our own budding careers and social lives, reunions with college best friends are few and far between. My friends are particularly low-maintenance, which works perfectly for us. But even though I’d rather slide down a razor blade into a pool of lemon juice than go to another frat party, I crave the familiarity of college and the familiar emotional support of my best friends there. So when my college trio finally settled on a date to reunite in D.C., I dropped $120 I couldn’t really afford to spend and booked a Capitol-bound train.
Between paying rent, working an assistant job while trying to make it in New York as a writer, I'm horrid at long-distance communication. I wasn't surprised that the three of us effortlessly fell back into our old habits, no small talk needed. Within minutes, we were peeing with the door open, getting too invested in KUWTK, and having all-too-serious conversations about rape culture in America.
Thinking back on it, the three of us (now a nurse, a speech pathologist, and a writer) never had all that many interests in common.
But our relationships never truly rested on common interests. We bonded over homework and families and the dreams we had for our futures. The support was--and still is--predominately emotional. When I drove my sister to the hospital after an overdose, it didn't matter that Natalie wasn't into books. She was there for me.
But as we've settled into our adult lives where we don't have homework and Harrisonburg traffic patterns to bitch about, the common ground grows thinner. We no longer spend our time envisioning what post-grad life will be together when our kids are best friends and I can bop down to her house three rows down when I need to borrow milk. Our careers and personal lives are taking us in entirely different directions.
I found myself talking about New York non-stop. I talked about a book I just read and the all-time weirdest indie documentary I had just seen about J.T. LeRoy. About how commercials were getting more inventive these days, the narratives clearer and emotionally engaging. They nodded and smiled as I sounded majorly pretentious, however unintentionally. These weren't things we ever connected on, but they listened, because I love them and they love me. They can't contribute, and neither can I.
I won't understand what it's like to have a spirited cancer patient with whom I bonded over The Real Housewives of Orange County die after chemo failed. They won't understand how it felt to visit the memorial pools on 9/11 after living in New York for a year. Different experiences dominate our lives now. We're no longer working with hypotheticals to attain our career goals--we're actually doing it. And we're doing different things entirely.
But these reunions still serve a vital purpose. They knew me when I was taking selfies in between barfs after having too much tequila. And they know me now, as I'm making it in New York (or trying to, anyway). There will always be a place for those who accept you as a malleable being, people who celebrate your growth.
So it doesn't really matter what you do when you reunite with your best friends, because it didn't really matter what you were doing when you were still in college.
However, getting wine-drunk and dancing around the living room is always a good idea.