To Me, You Are Perfect

When I was younger, I used to dream about my Prince Charming, my Mr. Darcy, my one true love. I knew there had to be the perfect man out there that would, swoon, love me just as I am. Romanticized visions of marriage and partnership danced in my head. Even doing the dishes together would be foreplay, I dreamt. Sweet wedded bliss meant a best friend and a lover all at once, no need for anyone else.

And it happened. I have an incredible husband. He loves me for me. Yes, yes, yes. It's everything I thought it could be. (Except for the dishes thing, obviously.) But now, as I get older, I'm understanding something that I didn't before. There is absolutely a need for others. All that time I spent seeking Mr. Right may well have been better spent fostering the relationships that I, stupidly, took for granted. Because who else offers us unconditional acceptance & companionship? Who else loves us just as we are?

Exactly. Our girlfriends. Our friend family. Our urban tribe.

Yes, of course, it makes sense that our focus is usually inward, on our own families, on the partnership that we've created within our own homes. But I will argue that nurturing those female friendships that we've come to depend on is also important. (And this isn't just a way for me to get my husband to agree that I need more Girls Nights Out. I mean, not completely.) They keep us sane, they keep us grounded, they keep us going.

And so today, let's raise a glass to all of the ladies in our lives that make it that much more sparkly. Here's to your hilarity and your drive and your swagger and your beauty and your brilliance. To the way you light up a room as you enter. To your unconditional support even when you disagree with us. Here's to your ability to admit fear & insecurity. Here's to your always knowing the right thing to say. To your bad dancing and mistake-making. To your amazing achievements and unbelievable fortitude. To your companionship and always spot-on advice. To your differing opinions and showing us that there is more than one right way. To your quiet strength and the way you speak up for what you know is right. Here's to always being there for each other. Here's to enduring both sun and rain.

Here's to you, you beautiful sparkling amazing you.

This Is Where We Used To Live

At the end of an episode of Girls, Hanna is dancing on her own in her room when roommate Marnie comes home, finds her, and a roommate/BFF dance party immediately commences.  Which is clearly what would happen in real life.

I loved living alone, and of course, I love living with my family.  But when I think about some of the most fun, most hilarious & most memorable moments of my life, so many of them took place in grungy old apartments shared with some of my best girls.  As roommates, we became almost like sisters, closer & more honest.  When you live in as close of quarters as we did, there isn't a lot of room for anything less.  C'mon, let's go behind the scenes of when girls are roommates!

You will turn up the music really, really loud so you can't hear her fighting with her boyfriend. Even at 1am.  You will come home after work to find that an impromptu keg party has commenced, and they need a fourth for Euchre.  You will share everything:  shampoo, cigarettes, Doritos, secrets, money, toothbrushes, intimate details about your booty calls, clothes, modes of transportation.  If your boyfriend dumps you, she will come home with beer, wine, and ice cream - just because she wanted you to have options.  You will get pissed when she eats all of your leftovers that you were saving specifically for dinner that night.  But you'll forgive her when she pulls out some pot she scored that day.  You will have inside jokes that are so old & so complex, you won't be able to remember how they even got started.  But they will still be hilarious anyway. You will have no qualms about walking around naked in front of each other. You will laugh more than you ever thought possible.  You will make up a choreographed dance at 11pm on a Tuesday just because.  You will hear her having incredibly loud sex on a regular basis. And it won't faze you.  You will be there for each other during the big things, the scary things, the life-changing things. A good Monday night will be watching Lifetime Television for Women together while drinking White Zin and eating tuna noodle casserole. You will refer to you & your roommate as "we" and "us" more than often than you do with your boyfriend.  You will actually be more of a "we" and an "us" than you are with your boyfriend. You will agree on everything.  You will fight about everything.  You will feel sadness when you move out of that dirty little apartment because you'll know that it's the end of something.  But you'll also know that you're more than just friends now.  You're so much more than that.  

I Can Tell That We Are Gonna Be Friends

Sometimes we have the good fortune of crossing paths with someone we just vibe with.  You know what I'm talking about, right?  We meet someone, and it's just easy.  Conversation flows so naturally right from the start that it feels like we're old friends.  We're clicking.  We're connecting. We're vibing.  It's incredible when this happens, right?  How lucky are we?  How fortuitous is it that out of all the people in the world, we have stumbled across each other?  We have found a kindred spirit, someone who just seems to inherently "get" us.  When this happens, it's one of my favorite things ever.

Sometimes when we meet one of these kindred spirits, we become close friends.  We keep vibing through the years, we will never, ever run out of things to talk about, not ever.  We will open another bottle of wine, and then another, just because we don't want the moment to end.  We can go weeks, months, even years without seeing each other, but when we are finally in the same room again, it feels like balance has been restored in our worlds.  We just make sense.   

And sometimes when we are very lucky, we marry our kindred spirits.  

Other times, we only have the opportunity to vibe with each other for a night or maybe a weekend. We somehow know that our connection has an expiration, so we must soak up every second.  We stay out too late, we talk all night, we must fit in every conversation we would ever have throughout our lifetimes into hours. Later on, the moment will have passed, our connection will have changed.  But we'll always have Paris. 

Sometimes we just have a sense about someone, a sense that given the right opportunity, the chance to talk, to share a moment, that we would be kindred spirits.  And sometimes it takes us by complete surprise.  We are blindsided by our new friendships.  But no matter how they happen, how they hit us, or for how long they last, these are the connections, the people, the moments, that make this life so delicious.  Drink them in. 

And if you're reading this post, and you think I might be talking about you, you should know that I absolutely am.