Structural Overhaul

So for the longest time I had this inbuilt hierarchy of friends that I had created as I moved from new environment to next: my 3-4 friends from high school, who I still kept in touch with, the best friends I had in college, then second tier friends from college, then law school friends, and then Thailand friends. In my f-ed up seniority matrix (not unlike the one at my office that determines office assignments - window or no window!) the more years we had been friends, and the priority you held in that period of time, usually meant you were somehow the "closest to me."

This year - my stages of progressions in life got flipped on its head. I went to my next stage post-Thailand, I have a new job but was making no new friends in this environment, it was same NY environment, rather I was just relying on friends from the different eras in my life. And I realized there has been a massive structural overhaul that has happened in the last five years or so. Yes I was far away for the past 3, and at some point abandoned keeping in touch with folks "at home" but now being home for 4 months or so, it seems like that I have to accept the fundamental shift in dynamics.

My best friends from growing up solidly hold their positions, but its because we've grown with each other throughout the years, shared each other lives and experiences through different eras, and reminiscing to middle school, high school, or elementary schools day for that matter is just kind of ridiculous. We share similar interests and senses of humor, and in some sense a shared perspective of the world deriving from our similar and dissimilar upbringings in the same little universe. But I immediately knew when I graduated high school, that even though at some point everyone had been a rotating best friend to me for some period of time in those six to nine years, I was probably not going to keep in touch with most people. There was never a question in my head who were the "lifers" from high school. I still keep in touch with other folks, which are sometimes is suprising, but again the "lifers" are untouchable.

College, with my rose colored glasses on, was an extraordinary idyllic time for me in terms of friendships. I made these intense and intimate relationships with numerous sets of women. The amount of time we spent together in those years was amazing, and with each person I had a really deep, exciting, fun, and meaningful friendship which I hoped would carry forward into forever. But the reality is many of us have grown in very different directions, and then surprisingly others have converged more often after graduation than ever anticipated. So while they are all UNC gals, the hierarchy of how it was in 1999-2003, compared to 2011 has been turned on its head, and I haven't quite fully grasped it. (I know there were some boys in the mix, obviously one in particular who then became part of Thailand also but lets ignore them for the moment). Letting go of these women is harder, and even though many of our friendships persevered in the post-college years, the past five years there has been an ever growing distance in our approach to life or time we spend together, or the quality and type of conversations and presence we feel in each other's lives. While unexpected folks have ramped up, others have winded down. Its still hard for me to reconcile.

Law school. I never felt like I had any friends while I was in law school. I found everyone cold and aloof and uninterested in investing any energy or effort into spending time with me. One savior came halfway along the way, and another stuck by my side for the most part through the whole time. But that was it. Eventually the sheer amount of time we spent together, forced people to open up and I am shocked now to feel like I have a high number of close friends from law school - in direct contradiction from how i felt while we were in school. I am not sure how that happened, it could also be that our careers bind us together or once people became less anxious about careers and felt secure about their future and job prospects, they valued friendships more greatly or whatever. But I also struggle to realize how many of these people have climbed up the hierarchy and that many of them really took the time and effort to stay close while I was in Thailand. And the many others, will always be colleagues of some sort, which means its good to continue to invest in fostering relationships as we move forward in our careers. But colleagues is still a category totally separate from friendships.

Thailand. I had so many very discrete and separate groups of friends in Thailand. Work folks, powerhouse folks, Mae Sot folks, Zoe in Yellow folks, People from Burma activist community. Nearly three years there gave enormous depth to those relationships, now though, because of time, distance, and language face obvious challenges in upkeep and maintaining these relationships. I never really thought of anyone as a potential "lifer" from Thailand - I guess it was a category that I thought was inapplicable. But I realized that some of the folks were American ex-pats too and they are here and really, some of them who have been with me in the most recent years have shared something so recent and so common and they understand these missing links in my life puzzle (of what it means to have 2 homes in the world) and that is very important to me. And there is just a great chemistry with someone like Cresa.

So basically the old formula doesn't work. One might ask - why do I feel it necessary to have some sort of strange ranking system. Here is my Type A lawyer side. Its sort of a way to follow up, how to prioritize my limited amounts of free time, and also who to turn to when I am down and out or need advice or anything else of the sort.

I mean things will continue to shift in the future. My sisters have already taught me the kind of shift in relationships to expect from people when they start having children. But you know the biggest friend I've gained in all these years, and to sound ridiculously cheesy is myself. Honestly, I rarely get lonely. The loneliest I ever felt was in law school. Its part of what makes dating so hard. Is there isn't that raw craving to have someone around. In fact that is the part that is the most intimidating, because its an adjustment I don't really like. Its more wanted to have more meaningful relationship with a man that is more intimate. Curiosity of how it would progress and feel like in more than the beginning stages.

Okay time for bed!!!!!