Life Events; Enjoying my Life!

Friendships have always been important to me - as someone who grew up as the ugly duckling whenever I found a friend there was this piece of happiness that grew. My love for friends is not any different from other people, but it is still my experience with friends and the thought process I run away with after my anxiety chews me up and spit me out...probably for fun. While I have learned that friends are important and recognize how much happiness it brings to know that there is such joy in the relationships it is also hard when you are missing out on the love. 

A couple of weeks ago now one of my good friends was married down in some country town of Missouri. Lovely venue, lovely people, lovely cake, etc. the entire wedding was beautiful and for me there was nothing missing. I am sure my friend and her wonderful beau could probably think of some more things that would have made the experience over the moon but they are also probably happy with what was there and who was there. 

Now that I have laid out my preface of information I will jump into the few weeks before the wedding. It was important because it was the first time in my life I realized how much I actually care about my friendships. I think on a regular basis humans talk about their true love and care for things, but when moments arrive and you become speechless there is this whole other level of knowing what your “whatever” means to you. I make this to be the equivalent of love because if you cannot love people in your life then...why are you even dedicating time to the relationship. Regardless, back to my feelings - I was in such a stuck moment of realizing how much I cared about my friends that I immediately became scared of what it meant to travel five hours to Missouri to see my friend solidify the love that she has for a wonderful guy. I spent so much time trying to figure out why I was scared, but because I was not able to think of something or put my finger on the feeling I then immediately became stressed about traveling and eventually got to the point where I did not want to travel to the wedding. I was thinking about how I could make excuses to tell my friend because I just did not want to deal with the stress of whatever emotions were going to eat me alive during the wedding. I avoided booking my hotel because apparently that would stop me from going...it is not like I missed buying a plane ticket. Weeks went past and every time someone asked me if I was busy that weekend - I became sad and worried for reasons that I was not able to vocalize. But again, whatever I was going to attend the wedding at this point and I was going to have to learn what it was that my body was trying to teach me, so the weekend rolled around and I jumped in my little silver car and bopped my way down to southern Illinois where lots happened for me as I became more of an adult. 

On my way to begin the wedding festivities...every possible first world problem hit me. My car cord died so I had to drive 20 minutes listening to the radio, my wifi ran out so I was running on the left over from when I had a good month of not using too much of the network, and my favorite podcast had no more episodes for me to listen to. Every time one of those things happened or I thought about it - I was like damn I should just go back to Iowa. Clearly convincing myself otherwise those things were just not reason enough to abandon my friends wedding. Things soon clicked on my ride when I pulled over at a store to buy a new phone cord. I was in a town where a lot of people from my undergrad lived/grew up. While shopping, I noticed two people that looked familiar (do not worry I never spoke to them) eventually coming to the conclusion that they were people from my wonderful mid size undergrad. The moment I saw them was when I finally knew what it was that caused me to have such strong emotions about heading to the wedding. 

Going to the wedding finally made me realize how much I care about them, but I had not focused so much on our growth since meeting each other during undergrad. My emotions were clearly jealousy and sadness realizing that yet another step was happening for one of my friends and I would be miles away while a decent amount of my friends experienced things together. During the last 2.5 hours of the drive I reflected solely on the experience of spending two years in another state away from my first real friends and family. Although I had convinced myself that moving to Iowa for graduate school was the move, I never had a discussion with myself about what things would feel like if I stayed or moved elsewhere to be a professional. Years prior I convinced myself that Iowa was temporary, but soon after arriving it did become home, but I just never moved everything - I still stored things down in Southern Illinois (corny, I know). Once I was able to realize this and have my light bulb moment - feelings became different. I came to terms with a few things during that drive and it made things better. 

I was able to arrive at my friends house and enjoy the time of us sitting on the kitchen floor talking about old things but also sharing new things. Spending the night before the wedding enjoying the company of each other and remembering what it is that I love about these people. I laughed harder than ever and just sat around being comfortable discussing how much things are changing. The best part was probably sharing our adult gadgets and steaming a dress together, but no matter how small it may seem to others it was an addition to the million little things about them that I care about. 

I did not know that I needed this experience to happen. I figured the transition would be smooth and amazing, but there were bumps in the road. I was able to figure it out and thoroughly enjoy seeing my friends get married. While they may have thought I was being a boring bear sitting down at the wedding, I was recording some of the things happening to help me recall the necessity of writing this blog. Surprise, I was doing one of my favorite things to do when I know I want to write about something. Recalling how big someone's smile is, or how smooth their dance move is on the floor is exciting and since I wanted to capture my real experience I had to do so. 

As I wrap things up here is a clarity point, the process of going to the wedding has taught me to be comfortable knowing my friends are growing and thriving. It is okay to feel left out or lonely because of the distance, but what matters is that sharing these special moments is important (especially when you are missing folks). It also reminds me that I have work to do in order to make sure that I continue to have relationships with friends that I truly care about and show them that I care. Remember what I mentioned at the beginning...each friendship that I have found has created its own piece of happiness. Here is to my friends, I love you and cannot wait to share more life events with you all. 

By the way...follow sugarhillconfectionery on instagram- (pictured wedding cake by them...amazing)!!