Posts tagged with "friends"

Praise The Night

Oh, and lis­ten to this.

Sometimes you wish your friends lived far away so you could dri­ve home for­ev­er, and sing off-key into the dark­ness.

But at some point you have to come home and undress, you have to stop the pres­sure of the water run­ning down your back and step out of the show­er, you have to go to bed for the sake of your colon, you have to put aside your thoughts for anoth­er day.

There was some­thing about his expres­sion that made you believe that you’re bet­ter now. You’re safer. Maybe the real­iza­tion that your mis­takes are your own to make. That you’re stronger now than you ever were, and that peo­ple care about you, enough to tell you the truth when it’s the last thing you want to hear.

Praise the night, for this would­n’t be pos­si­ble any oth­er time.

Lost Among Friends

Wrapping pigs in a blanket

Thumbnail: Washing beaters
Thumbnail: cantaloupe seeds
Thumbnail: Making French toast
Thumbnail: Thick cut maple bacon
Thumbnail: Pouring smoothies
Thumbnail: Cooked waffles
Thumbnail: Cheesecake
Thumbnail: Cooked pigs
Thumbnail: French toast
Thumbnail: Cantaloupe slices
 

Sunday pot luck brunch was a lit­tle dif­fer­ent this week­end; instead of head­ing to Tim’s, I was at Pat and Jen’s. It was col­lec­tion time for a sit-up com­pe­ti­tion (where Julie destroyed every­one in both the largest total sit-ups and most improved over the last two months, win­ning $60), and we decid­ed to get togeth­er to see how every­one was feel­ing, per­haps com­pare a six-pack or two.

There were home­made waf­fles, fresh fruit, hon­ey bacon, French toast, pigs in blan­kets, smooth­ies, crois­sants, and cheese­cake. So much deli­cious food that I could eat, now that I’m on med­ica­tion to con­trol food induced flare-ups, and I hap­pi­ly gorged myself.

Waffle with fruit

It was such a lazy Sunday. Long con­ver­sa­tions sit­ting around the table, then hang­ing out and play­ing games for hours while the food digest­ed.

Pat lat­er told me he used to come here and read about what’s hap­pen­ing with me, but has stopped read­ing alto­geth­er. The rea­son — and he paused as he was telling me this so that I under­stood the grav­i­ty of it — was that he would rather hear things from me per­son­al­ly.

While this is far from the first time I’ve writ­ten about my friend­ship with him, it still amazes me. We rarely get any one-on-one time, even when I’m over at his house on the week­ends for food and con­ver­sa­tion, unless it’s on the phone.

Pat always takes such a con­cern about what’s going on in my life. He asks all the right ques­tions. He lis­tens whole­heart­ed­ly with­out inter­rupt­ing. He nev­er judges me. He calms me because every­thing he says makes so much sense. Just being able to open up, where I’m vul­ner­a­ble, and have him com­plete­ly accept what I’m say­ing makes me over­flow with emo­tion.

Maybe I just need some­one to under­stand me right now.

Self portrait

I think I’m going through a peri­od where I’m not get­ting enough social inter­ac­tion. My friends are too busy, or our sched­ules don’t work out. It’s left me con­fused and dis­il­lu­sioned.

Everyone seems to fit some­where, but I’m not sure where that leaves me. On days like this, when I’m sur­round­ed by peo­ple, it makes me think that per­haps I still don’t know where I belong.

Birthday Surprises

My friends know I don’t cel­e­brate my birth­day, because I don’t believe in rit­u­als1. I went through most of Thursday with­out any­one men­tion­ing any­thing, aside from Louise call­ing me from the road, remind­ing me that we were going out for lunch the next day — which the three of us do on our birth­days at work.

So when I got home around 9:30 that night — tired and hun­gry after Tai Chi — I was sur­prised to find a let­ter taped to my front door. This let­ter lead to my birth­day game:

Then, before I went to bed, I real­ized I had two phone mes­sages:

Hearing Dan and his fam­i­ly singing was awe­some, but hear­ing my dad’s voice was some­thing else. He had nev­er called to wish me hap­py birth­day him­self; it was a day only my mom would remem­ber, and she would always pass the phone to him.

It seems like every year I expect noth­ing to hap­pen, but I end up being sur­prised in one way or anoth­er.

  1. And this was before I dis­cov­ered Taoism [↩]