The idea for this post comes from a very dear friend of mine. Since we met, it has been an ongoing understanding that we are soul mates – each others’ better half. Our bond over the past few years has only grown deeper and distance has not even tampered that. As we are both now away from our once so familiar streets, beloved Oregon rain, she is amidst Arizona desert sun and I am somewhere between palm trees and the South Florida waters, we still know each other in such a perfect light.
She recently posted on her blog in detail of the evening we first met. I was interested to read how she interpreted that first interaction. While our memories of it are similar, I couldn’t tell you what I was wearing and she remembers this. I remember her gray hoodie (very much so a trademark for both of us…I believe that same hoodie she was wearing that night was shared between us for the next year). I remember her blond hair positively glowing in the street lights that lined the Benton County Courthouse that was across the street from our decrepit apartment building. She was lugging a huge black leather purse, which I would later come to find as comfort and always full of a wide variety of lip gloss. Her cell phone never worked properly. It still doesn’t. Getting to the point…
I am going to take you past that night though. Past the moment when I later ran into her at my favorite watering hole, which was ever so conveniently across the street from our apartment (very alcoholic maneuver on my behalf…less driving/easier access). She and I exchanged phone numbers and in my drunken stupor, I typed her name into my phone in some strange code that by some grace, I remembered in the morning to be her.
That following morning, I awoke to the sun beating through my blinds. It was February and sun in Oregon is never anticipated at such an early month. My hangover was beginning to crawl over my skin and I threw the blankets over my head, willing it to disappear. I was hungry. It was 9am. I was lonely, hung over, possibly still drunk, in dire need of greasy food, and was in no way willing to drive to Safeway (though it was only four blocks from our building). I reached for my cell phone to raid the list of text messages, incoming and outgoing from the night before. None were offensive or anything shame worthy. Mission accomplished, none the less. I then notice an oddly spelled name that resembled my neighbors but I couldn’t be certain. Screw it, I thought, and I called it. Sure enough, she too was awake and in the same condition as I. We both gathered ourselves, sweatshirts, over-sized handbags (very common for both of us), sunglasses to ward off the offensive glare of this strange bright ball in the sky, and off we went on a mission to Safeway. Our grocery list read that of the standard recovery food, and I remember drinking an entire gallon of Sunny D while we sat and watched Friends DVDs in my tiny studio apartment, as I did not have cable. From that day on, there was an understanding that we made sense to each other.
Over the course of that year, we would share apartment keys, trade apartments, complain about crazy neighbors, cry over boys (yes boys, not men yet), have our fair share of trying moments. She would hold my hand as I stumbled home from the bar, barely able to walk myself up the five steps leading into our building. We would break into our building after I lost my keys. We would light off fireworks behind the police department on the Fourth of July, all the while taking shots of very cheap grape vodka in broad daylight. She is one of the few friends to stand the test of my sobriety and stay by me. She is my better half – the one that understands the importance of plaid flannel, leggings, and knee-high leather boots, even in 80 degree heat. The person that always knew how a lyric could shift the momentum of the day and that songs, notes, and sounds were always the driving factor behind both of our veins. And now we are separated by a long list of states, miles, and what seem to be never-ending freeways, yet we continue on and everyday remind each other that though the loneliness is often palpable, there is understanding and knowing somewhere in Arizona.
Well I made my way back down to the valley
Right on past 83rd street
That’s where we once belonged
But I’m gone
I swear I’m long gone
So give it up, throw your hats in the air
And change is as you ladies say
“We’ll get out of here”
Something tells me that you’re too scared to go
So the stairs that you could climb
Are the ones you’ve left behind
And your eyes light up when we talk about the past
God, I miss those songs we used to sing
Talking like getting away would be the greatest thing
Well me, I got out,
And you, you kept singing to me
Like that’s really going to set this free
So give it up, throw your hats in the air
And change just as they land
You’re saying, “We’ll get out of here”
Something tells me that you’re too scared to go
Like a ghost
You’ve been haunting all these dusty old roads and old homes
The ones we swore we’d never go, oh oh
The Format – Give It Up

Three years ago in our old 525 building...