A Teensy Rant Mostly About Friendship

Hello all! Sorry it’s been awhile. A super quick update:

I’m working a lot.

I’m writing a lot.

Lent fucking sucks. I participate in Lent for a few reasons, but mainly, it’s because my winter diet ends up being almost exclusively junk food and sweets. Winter Dee thrives on Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and Godiva Chocolate Cheesecake. Since high school, I’ve cut out either one or both of them for Lent and it breaks the downward spiral into some sort of chocolaty salt-covered abyss. This year, because I’m apparently a masochist, I’ve cut out both while still adjusting to a new city and my first full time job. In other words, I’m a freaking idiot. This is the hardest Lent I’ve had since I started this tradition. The junk food is pretty easy, because I’ve found a successful substitute for potato chips: kale chips. Dude, guys…kale chips are fucking delicious. Make them, thank me later. My sweets ban, however, has proven excruciating this year. Not only do I get half off at the café where we serve slices of cheesecake every day, but I have a bunch of incredibly sweet coworkers who love to bake all sorts of cupcakes, breads, and even one who brings in donuts for everybody. I’m going to get through it, like I always do, but good God¸ I just want to stick my face in a bucket of chocolate frosting.

This was a common part of my lunch pre-Lent...ahhh...:licks screen:

            Anyway, this post is going to be pretty brief. For our first Valentine’s Day, The Boyfriend and I decided that instead of fighting for a table in a cramped restaurant with every other couple on Earth, we’d do something that was meaningful to us. We went to visit The Boyfriend’s family up north and then celebrated at the place that brought us together, Sky Bar’s Ination in BG. I’ve mentioned Ination in one of my very first posts, so I’ll try my hardest not to rave about it again, but seriously, it is the one place I feel most at home, most in my element, and most at ease. Spending my Wednesday nights at Ination was the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. It brought me some of the sweetest people in my life, my boyfriend, even inspiration in both dance and writing. I miss my darkling throng so much that my heart hurts with each passing Wednesday.

            And utter failure on the not raving about it again.

            Adesso, Valentine’s Day couldn’t have come at a better time, because I was heartsick by the time we packed up the car and started the drive. My depression had hit hard. I was stuck in a mental rut. It had taken awhile, but being away from friends for so long, only seeing family on holidays, and not having the time or energy to explore the city or socialize with the handful of friends around here, had taken its toll. I was not in a good state. A lot of people experience a social lull after leaving the constant hub of communication and interaction that is college, and as a social butterfly, I’d been feeling…what’s the word? Insignificant? Isolated? Somewhere between that.

But once we got into BG, and I got to see Venus for a bit before heading into Ination, I perked up. I miss Venus. A lot. And seeing her even for ten minutes was just awesome. And when The Boyfriend and I finally got to the club, all the emotional crap that had been hanging like a chain around my neck evaporated, just like that. It had been four months since I’d stepped foot in BG and it didn’t matter.  My darkling throng pounced on me. The night was full of bone crushing hugs, excited squeals (not just from me, believe it or not!), and people swinging me off my feet. It was so much more than I was hoping for. I was loved, I was missed, I was dancing, and it was wonderful! Depression gone!

Yes, that is a JokerHarley couple beside me. And you wonder why  I fawn over this place.

Friendship is a tricky thing, especially for me. I love people very quickly (er, platonically, I have some serious baggage on the romantic end). I have around 700 friends on Facebook, and I truly consider 90% of them real friends…the remaining 10% being mostly members of bands I love, belly dancers I admire but don’t personally know, George Takei, and other celebrity type people we all have on our friends lists. Most of the people I seek out to hug and cuddle at Ination are people I never saw outside of Sky Bar. I’ve always preferred to socialize in big group situations. I’m perfectly happy spending time with smaller groups in more intimate settings (holy crap, what up!), but for the majority of people on my friends list, I do not spend time chilling on their couches. I think it’s because on a more intimate level, people tend to find me a little more difficult to get along with. It’s not always fun hanging out with an overly opinionated bitch. But honestly, I don’t consider someone I only see on theme nights or hobby get-togethers as less of a ‘friend’. We might not speak constantly, I might not know the ins and outs of your life, but God dammit, you fucking light up my life. I might not confess my deepest, darkest secrets to you, but my delighted squee at seeing your face and my torpedoing into your arms is absolutely genuine. However fucked up I am in other categories, I have a big heart, and I love people. Love them.

Aesthetic paragraph break just in time, because I’m starting to sound like a hippie.

Am I the only one who finds Chong just...adorable?

I know it seems shallow, but I like friendships like that just as much as my closer ones. I’ll always value the handful of best friends that I have, GG, Venus, Fratello, Zeus, St. Jimmy, Bug, to name a few, whom I keep in contact with semi-regularly. But I love the friends I have that I don’t keep up with very often either, and there are a lot of them. Even with Facebook, I’m not very good at keeping in contact with people. I’m not proud of it and have, since Valentine’s Day especially, been working on it, texting people I miss when I miss them, posting on their walls, little things like that. I don’t ever want any of my darlings to think I don’t care about them because I haven’t talked to them in a while. And honestly, that’s what was so refreshing about popping into Ination. Nobody cared that we hadn’t talked in a while. We were just happy to see each other!

I had a conversation with GG a while back about friendship, mostly us musing about how we started out despising each other and have ended up such great friends. “A best friend is somebody you might not always keep up with, but once you get together, it’s like a day hasn’t gone by. You just pick up right where you left off.”

I agree. GG lives in Pennsylvania, many hours away from me, and when we talk, it’s like we’re both in BG and just happen to be online. We might see each other a couple of times a year and go weeks without chatting, but it doesn’t matter. I have a friend who lives in CBus who probably needs a blog nickname at some point, whom I hadn’t talked to in a couple of years. We met for coffee and ended up talking for over four hours. It was like nothing had changed. And honestly, relationships like that are great. I’ve always maintained that friendships are gentler, calmer things than romantic relationships, and they don’t require as much upkeep. There’s something refreshing about that. I will make more effort to keep in contact with my friends, especially the ones who really enjoy chatting, but for me, just a text once in a great while or a little ‘hey, how’re things?’ on Facebook keeps me happy until I see you again.

I love you, my imaginary/invisible readers.

And I really, really want some cheesecake.

Good God, it's like food porn.