A Case Study

The other night a man showed up on my door step with an bouquet of irises, an excessive amount of enormous apple turnovers and Tofutti Marry Me Ice Cream bars. Unfortunately, it was not my future husband, but rather an old friend who I have the pleasure of seeing approximately once a year.

I had made dinner which we ate on the living room floor like old times. Back in the day it was white rice and canned chili at 10:00 at night but tonight is was sweet potato fries and roasted chicken sandwiches with melted mozzarella, avocado and balsamic vinegar at the reasonable dinner hour of 7:30.

Our friendship could be a case study of something, I don’t know what, but something. But after 7 years we have remained in touch chatting weekly and often on a daily basis. Despite 3000 miles for the last 5 years, lots of name calling, jabs, mocking, periods of silence and bitter arguments that could destroy marriages I think we would call each other friends.

I had three deductions from the night:

1.) I realized I might actually be ready for my next relationship. It was nice to have a guy around to change the light bulb that had been burned out for far too long, help decide how to hang pictures and to share dessert with (and by share, he had 2 bites…perfect partner in dessert). It was nice to have someone there wanting to be helpful, calling my bullshit and listening to what I had to say (I only presume he was doing the latter).
2.) Our friendship is truly rare for better and for worse and I place value in that. As we were chatting about the higher things in life, what does it mean to live, work, relationships, family, etc. it dawned on me that this person knew me back in the day, understands all the men in my life and crumbled relationships that fell from them. I have never called anyone an a-hole to their face so many times and meant it. It was nice to just be myself and have no airs because not only does nothing get by him, he calls me out on my shit. He knows more about me than I probably care to admit.
3.) We are so categorically different. He has romanticized notions of work/career and practical approaches to relationship. I have practical approaches to work/career and romanticized notions of relationships. He’s a big picture scientist, I am a methodically planning idealist. He’s a workaholic with a future is discovering something really big for the good of mankind. I’m a playaholic with a future in really great times and discovering how to live life to the fullest every day. These difference are awesome and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

I’m holding back a little bit and choosing my words carefully, because I know he reads this eagerly awaiting for my next post, but I guess what I really want to say is that it’s been an interesting 7 years of forced growth and I’m curious to see what our friendship holds in the future. No doubt it will change, but if the past has been any indication of where we are going, it will certainly be interesting.