Good Friends

I miss living in community. I realized today that not having something to work toward isn't the problem here. I knew the awkward month between school and camp would be tough on me- a time too short to get hired for a decent job and much too long to make sitting on the couch everyday acceptable. And after just two weeks, I'm bored out of my mind. I just miss having people around all the time.

It's been really good to spend time with some of my best friends from high school (it still freaks me out to refer to them as "friends from high school") and catch up with friends I've failed to keep in touch with over the last year. I've been on some good adventures thus far, but even keeping busy with seeing friends and exploring Portland hasn't been very satisfying. It's not that I'm bored because there's not enough to do; I'm bored because I'm not spending very much time with many of my friends, and the short amount of time I have spent with them seems so shallow. I guess I'm starting to see down the tunnel of never ending coffee dates (which I love) and catch up hang outs (also great), and that intimidates me. Like, do I really want to be filling in the gaps in old friendships every time I come back from now on? That's so unfulfilling. I'm in the process of learning that even when it seems like everything has changed, I'll still have friends who are willing to listen to stories about my new life that they can't relate to and friends they don't know and they won't even complain about it. And I'm learning to reciprocate. Because it doesn't really matter that we've been apart for however-many-months and that there are a lot of awkward lulls in our conversation, because good friends aren't something we just stumble upon.

Today I met Erika at an adorable Indian teahouse in Southeast Portland, where we spent a few solid hours talking about everything- tea, friends, nursing school, Portland, and everything in between. After tea we walked through the neighborhoods in the area and eventually made our way back to the food carts for lunch. When we sat down to eat at an outdoor picnic table we were soaking up the sun and before we even finished eating it was pouring down rain. Typical Oregon. We were both sporting Birks, so we had some very wet, muddy toes by the time we made it back to our cars.

I walked away from my day with Erika with a full heart. I saw hope for all of my other friendships that usually linger on the surface. Although we don't do a great job of keeping in touch while we're both at school, we're surprisingly good at condensing an entire semester's happenings into a coherent conversation. It was a few hours of talking through all aspects of life so openly with a good friend that gave me the satisfaction I've found through living in community with a bunch of new friends for the past year. And that's what will make anything I may find myself doing worthwhile- spending time with good friends. So even if I spend the next two and a half weeks sitting on the couch everyday, I can know that I accomplished something :)