30 'til 30 Day 3: F*R*I*E*N*D*S

Confession: I binged watched three seasons of Friends over break. Between syndication and the first run of the show back when I was in high school, I'm sure I've seen almost every episode already, but the allure of the whole series being right there at my fingertips on Netflix was just too hard to pass up.

Like many in my generation, I think Friends set a bit of an unrealistic expectation for my post-grad social life. Of course, I knew people who moved to the same cities as most of their friends from college and who, from what I can tell on Facebook, have been hanging out with the same people ever since. But my nomadic lifestyle, especially in those first few years after college, kept me from forming that kind of a tight bond with any one group.

Even in high school and college, I never stuck to just one clique. I was friends with lots of individual people from all walks of life. I had my theatre buddies, my youth group friends, then in college, my Intervarsity friends, more theatre pals, my tour-guide friends, etc.

For a long time, I saw my scattered friendships as a failing, longing for a close-knit group of my own and envying those who had this type of community. I once dated someone for a few months longer than I should have, simply because his friends and their wives and girlfriends, who had all known each other for years, were this cool clique that I wanted to belong with so badly. I was devastated when we broke up, less because the relationship was over, and more because I no longer was welcome in the group.

As time has gone on, I've grown to be grateful for the friendships I do have. On one of the (too many) episodes of Friends I watched recently, some character said something about leaving town to get away from the group, to which Phoebe replied, "But where are you going to go? All of your friends are right here."

Having one group to hang out with is great in many respects. I have been lucky enough over the past year and a half to grow really close really quickly with a "crew" of teacher friends, with whom I love to spend most of my spare evenings, weekends, and break days. But I also would never trade the individual relationships I have cultivated over the years. From a roommate-turned-travel-buddy and other dear friends in Seattle, to a road-trip-partner-in-crime in Portland, high school best friends in Los Angeles, college soul sisters in North Carolina and Dallas, an almost sister-in-law in Atlanta, the coolest of cousins in Austin, Richmond Theatre loves, church friends, and brunch buddies, and, of course, the most wonderful new roommate who has stuck with me through the best and worst times of the past 10 years, I could not be more grateful to have loved ones scattered all over the country. Who needs Central Perk when the whole world is your coffee shop??

 

It's taken a lot of time and reflection to get here, but I've never felt more content relationally than I do at this exact moment in time. And if the next ten years bring as many more beautiful people into my life as the last decade has, I will be a blessed woman, indeed!