a photo from our Saturday night
This past weekend I spent a fun night out with two of my favorite people, and I've been thinking so much about the idea of friendship and how it's changed for me over the years. I find it so interesting look back through the past couple of decades and see the kind of friends I gravitated towards (or was), and how that's shifted over time. At different stages there were different things- party friends, easy breezy friends, school friends. At times the kind of friends I didn't always feel comfortable letting down my guard around or allowing them "in." But really, all I want is REAL. I want to be able to be myself- my sometimes neurotic, always chatty, incredibly emotional, occasionally moody, weird self- and I want the people I call my closest friends to be able to feel like they can be exactly who they are too, all of the time. For the most part I've had the same people around for a long, long time, and although I do love meeting new friends, at this stage in my life I'm really enjoying getting to know the people already here in new ways as we get older and navigate our 30s together.
This past weekend we had some good conversations about this and everything else in between- about just wanting to cut the bullshit out of life and get right down to it. And it's not that I ever didn't want real in my relationships, but I think as I've experienced more and more in life, parts of this outer shell I've put up (without even realizing it was there...) has come down. And you know what? As scary as it is to be you, 100% you, it feels good to let people see that person and let them into who you truly are. And in return, you allow your friends to be on that same level, and what you get is a whole bunch of really awesome real-ness. Are you still with me? ;)
I've been sitting here trying to write this post for awhile. I write about things like this often, so I struggled for a bit with how to share what I'm feeling without sounding like I'm repeating myself like I can sometimes do. It's hard to put "let's get weird" in an eloquent way, but here it is: all I want is to be a safe place for the people I love. I want them to know that I will always love them just the way they are, just as I know they love and accept me. Quite simply: be who you are, be that person loudly. I'm weird, you're weird...let's get weird together.
