It well may be
That we will never meet again
In this lifetime
So let me say before we part
So much of me
Is made of what I learned from you
You’ll be with me
Like a handprint on my heart
And now whatever way our stories end
I know you have re-written mine
By being my friend
–“For Good” from Wicked

I heard a wonderful story a few weeks ago. (I hope the woman who told me it won’t mind that I’m summarizing it here.  I unfortunately didn’t get her name, and have no way of contacting her, but if she reads this, know that when I tried to retell it to my husband, I burst into tears in the car.)

A woman had a best friend that she spoke to every day at least twice a day — first thing in the morning and last thing before bed.  They raised their children together, their husbands were business colleagues.  Down the road, after a move severed the first threads of their friendship, the relationship ended after the woman’s divorce.  Her husband took that couple into his circle of friends.

34 years passed, and the woman never stopped thinking of her friend.  She knew she would be in New York on a trip, which is where this woman lived.  So she called her and they set up a time to meet.  When the friend came down the steps, she said a special saying that the two of them used to recite about their friendship.  And in that moment, this woman knew that it hadn’t been unrequited love — that her friend had missed her just as much as she had missed her friend.  They had both thought of each other for 34 years.  And now, they’re finally back together again.

She told me this story because I was in New York, speaking about my book, Life from Scratch, which is about female friendships just as much as it is about rebuilding your life after a divorce or blogging.  I opened talking about the book by relaying some stories from my friendship with Julie and how they influenced the book.

As she spoke, I thought about friends who got away.  About friends who passed through my life for a few years, who were intense connections that for whatever reason didn’t continue.  And isn’t this what we all dream about — that we find out that the relationship meant exactly as much to the other person?  That they missed us just as much as we missed them?

What is it about our female friendships that make us cry when we try to talk about them?  I can’t tell you how many people tried to speak to me after the talk and got choked up as they relayed a story about their best friend.  And even worse, I don’t know this woman OR her friend, but when I tried to tell her story to Josh, I started crying because you can’t help but think of your own friendships — how you would feel if you ever lost them.

As we drove home, Josh told me about an NPR interview he heard with Stephen Schwartz who wrote the musical Wicked.  A song from the show, “For Good,” was featured in both Glee and the last Oprah show.  It is a song about two friends — one who has had many friendships and one who has only had this one — who have to part.  And they are saying everything that needs to be said to one another knowing they may never see each other again.

Stephen Schwartz, by virtue of the fact that he has a penis, didn’t know how to handle this idea.  How would two close female friends feel?  He asked his daughter to imagine what she would say to her best friend in this situation.

In the NPR interview, Stephen Schwartz says that his daughter told him:

She said no matter what person I become, there will always be in me the girl you knew, and no matter who I become, I would never have been that without knowing you.

And maybe that is why we connect so intensely with our female friends.  I can’t say those same words to my ex-boyfriends.  They were all well and good, but I don’t miss them like I miss my old female friends.  I can’t say that inside of me is still the girl that my ex-boyfriend-who-has-a-heart-the-size-of-a-rancid-sesame-seed knew.  He knew a side of me that I’m not proud of and has hopefully been squashed out of my existence.  I didn’t like who I was when I was with him.

Whereas that girl that my friend, J, knew in high school (who was a very different girl than the one my boyfriends at the time saw.  She got to see a deeper side of me that I didn’t reveal to many people) — she’s still buried somewhere in here.  J knew the essential Melissa; Melissa-boiled-down-to-her-core-traits.  And that Melissa is still around, completely changed and set on this life direction due to that friendship.  And I would agree with Stephen Schwartz’s assessment — if not for better, than at least it is for good.  I don’t think I could make a conscious choice not to incorporate the changes she created in me.  Our friendship changed me permanently; as do all my close female friendships.

I think the point of our relationships prior to the person you create a life with is to help you figure out who you want to love forever.  Dating is about figuring out what you want.  Friendships — those are about figuring out who you are.  What matters to you.  How you see the world.  And one day, hopefully if our female friendships have prepared us enough, we can take what we learn from them and make that man or woman we commit our lives to our best friend.

Which is not to say that our best friends don’t still have important work to do.  People evolve, and we need that support to navigate each change.  From the tiny readjustments of personality that come from a normal day, to the life changing events.

I could not have found Josh and become a good wife without my female friendships shaping me into the person I’ve become.  I could not continue to parent and love in the manner in which my family has become accustomed if not for the continued support of my friends.

I asked this of the programmers at the presentation (and so many people found me afterwards and answered it — I heard some wonderful stories that night.  People speak so effusively about their friends that I could almost picture these invisible people who were connected to the people in front of me).

Tell me about your best friend (and if any of it influences a character relationship in the sequel to Life from Scratch, you and your friend will get full credit in the thank you section).

Josh left this fantastic comment on the blogoversary post which a lot of people commented about.  Yes, my husband reads my blog.  Every once in a while, he comments.  Sometimes he will bring up a post over dinner.  But most of the time, it’s just this small comfort to know that he is quietly out there, noting my words, and we don’t need to talk about it.

I know some people keep their blog from their partner because it’s their space, a private swatch of the Internet where they can place their thoughts.  But I have such oral diarrhea about my feelings that I feel the opposite — I wouldn’t want to write this space if Josh wasn’t reading it.  He is the one who told me to start it, so really, if you want to thank someone for this space, it should be him.

What people didn’t know when they read that comment is that it came on a day when he was running around like crazy to get a gala into place.  It took an incredible amount of work on top of his normal job, and he was stretched thin.

At the gala that night, they brought him and another man onto stage to thank them for their work on the evening.  I was speaking to the mother of the other man during the cocktail hour and she said, “did your heart explode when they brought Josh onto the stage to thank him?  Because my heart was out to here seeing my son up there.”

And the only thing I could say is that my heart explodes every time I see Josh.  Period.

It explodes when I see him being honoured on stage, and it explodes when he’s washing the dishes.  It especially explodes when he takes all the night wakings from the kids so I can sleep.  It explodes when he’s trying on t-shirts at Old Navy and it explodes when he’s telling me about something he heard on NPR and it explodes when he’s patiently pausing Battlestar Gallactica and explaining something to me for the thirtieth time.  And yes, of course it explodes when he accomplishes something amazing like having his play performed on stages around the world or when he’s asked to present at a conference.  But my heart explodes.  Period.

The best way I can explain Josh is using this idea that a friend told me about the medication he takes.  My understanding based on piecing together snippets of explanation is that when he isn’t on it, he feels like there is this enormous chasm in his brain, this dark blot that holds his attention more than the outside world.  It has a pull, and that pull makes him focus on it instead of relationships or tasks at hand.  It makes him anxious and depressed because he is well aware that there is life outside the blot, but he can’t drag his attention away from that dark hole.

The medication literally plugs that hole, is the missing puzzle piece that slips into place, effectively covering up the dark blot.  With the medication in place, he can be this completely different person, one who can look in multiple directions and pay attention to details.

Perhaps that isn’t the most romantic way to describe my husband, but it is the most honest way.  I feel like most of us are born with this missing piece inside of us, and either we find that completion or we don’t.  Perhaps the luckiest ones are born without that need for companionship, but I also count myself amongst the lucky because I have found my missing piece, that person who slips quietly into my brain, plugging the dark blots of life so I can concentrate on being my best self.

I knew from the first date with Josh that he was the equivalent of what this medication was for my friend because I literally felt like a different person talking with him.  I felt like a better version of myself.  I felt like even though it was night time and winter, it was somehow sunnier.  I just felt better, even though, if you had asked me before I walked downstairs to get into his car, I would have said that I felt fine.

Because I did feel fine before Josh.  I just feel better now with Josh.  Just as there were people in my life who I could have married and made a life with and they would have been fine.  They would have been a decent fit.  But Josh is a perfect fit and therefore, in finding that completion I feel better than fine.

This particular fish needs a bicycle.

So thank you Josh, for reading, for commenting, for being you.

Thank you for the blogoversary wishes (and apologies for both posts becoming so damn long). Someone joked that I must grow tired of hearing nice things and… well… no.  Because I tell myself such shitty things about myself. (I am seriously the worst sort of bully because I can’t even report myself to the principal.)  I know I’m not alone (right?) in being a terrible, relentless critic of myself, therefore, we need these kind words to counterbalance the damage we do to ourselves.  It’s probably the real reason for awards and birthday wishes and retirement parties — we all collectively know about our private self-esteem issues and we do each other a favour of trying to balance out the internalized negativity with external words.  I always hope that your external words get closer to the truth than my internal monologue.  At my best moments, I believe it all.  At my worst moments, my internal monologue convinces me that it’s the rest of the world that has it wrong.

At all moments, those posts are the ones I return to when I am feeling crappy about myself.  So your words don’t just affect me today.  It’s such a simple thing — you leave a comment, but know that your words are used many times throughout the year.  And they are what makes the difference.

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I started running again this week.  A big part of why I stopped running this year had to do with time.  The only slot I had for running was 6 am, and I tried it a bunch of times before giving up.  The reality is that I’m not fantastic at waking up, probably due to the fact that it takes me so long to fall asleep that I live with a constant sleep deficit.  So running first thing in the morning failed miserably because I spent the first five minutes after the alarm went off wishing for a power outage so I wouldn’t have to workout. (I run inside.)

My schedule opened up so I’ve gone back to my much more realistic running time which comes after a cup of coffee and three pee breaks.  I actually enjoy running when I’m fully awake.

I have a notebook where I record miles run and estimated calories burned.  I also record my weight from time to time, though I’ve stopped stepping on a scale because I was becoming obsessed with the number.  On Monday, I leafed back through the book to the very beginning to see my weight back in 2001 when the notebook begins.

I thought I was so heavy back then.  I was so self-conscious of my body.  Of course, I was nine pounds lighter than I am right now.  It is this bizarre thing, trying to get back to the weight where I thought I was unattractive.  I have in my brain right now that if I could just reach that weight from 2001, my clothes will fit so much better.  Back in 2001, I would do anything to not be that weight.  Right now, it seems like perfection.

Funny how things change.

What did you think of your body ten years ago?  And how do you think about your body from ten years ago now?

*******

And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Your Dream Will Change… and That’s Okay” (The Road Less Travelled)

Okay, now my choices this week.

My Lady of the Lantern has a post in bullet points, each one a little kick to the gut.  All of them will hold you for a moment, but it was the last one that I sat with the longest.  “I had a dream today. In the days after knowing of CheekyBub’s death and later, I begged God to not make me have any visions or dreams or such. I had one today, and am glad to report it was positive.”

The Port of Indecision has a kickass post about the financial side of infertility.  She reeled me in with her opening point about infertility being discussed differently from the rest of medicine.  “Face it, folks, the entire field of medicine is an industry. It’s why Big Pharma sponsors clinical trials. It’s why commercials urge you to ‘talk to your doctor about [new drug here]’ instead of actually being a patient and seeing what the doctor suggests.”  This has always been one of my annoyances too, especially because the label is simultaneously unspoken commentary about the patient.

I love this post about what it means to have it all by It Is What It Is (or It Is?).  Both her ideas on why the waiting during adoption is so difficult for her, but also deconstructing the idea of having it all.  I think her ideas on wanting will resonate with a lot of people, especially in an age of immediacy coupled with the means to obtain inanimate objects.

Lastly, Write Mind Open Heart has a post not about why bad things happen to good people, but simply the fact that they do.  From the idea of the flattened orange peel (really, you’ll want to read this post and understand that) to the lesson her daughter learned, she captivate me with this idea of how no one human can escape disappointment.  And the trick is learning how to love your blemishes rather than only focus on how to remove them.

The roundup to the Roundup: Thank you for the blogoversary wishes.  I started running again and it made me reflect on what I thought of my body 10 years ago.  And lots of great blog posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between June 17 and June 24) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

This is the second part of a two-part blog post.  As I said before, one post simply grew too long to contain everything I wanted to say.  The first part can be found here (containing Takes One, Two, and Three).

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Take Four:

Five years ago, I started this blog.  The twins were still babies.  I was so confident that we’d have another child.  I didn’t know how we’d pay the bills.  I wanted to be a writer, but the only thing I thought I knew how to do is be a teacher.  I had a small circle of friends.

The twins are turning seven this summer.  We don’t have that third child and I don’t know if we ever will.  I’m able to work out of the house and be a full-time parent.  I have two books published.  I miss teaching from time to time, but it doesn’t feel like the only thing I could do with myself.  I know people around the world and my friendship circles are like rings, many deep.

There is a saying in DC that if you don’t like the weather, wait ten minutes.

(Yes, I’m aware that other cities also have this saying, but it actually originated in The Washington Post on March 4, 1934.  So there.)

The same can be said about life.  Whether or not you like the figurative weather, it’s going to change.  That can be bittersweet when life is good.  And it can be a huge relief when things are bad.  It will not always be like this.

The same can be said about blogs, which is why I rarely unsubscribe from reading one.  Even if I don’t like the post I’m reading today, I may like the one the person writes tomorrow.  Chances are, if I took the time in the first place to subscribe to the blog, that more interesting things will percolate to the screen at some point in the future.

The same can be said about writing a blog — the stats of today, the comments of today, the readership of today — it will all be different tomorrow.  That can be a bad thing if you’re enjoying a creative period and the posts are flowing.  The readers are coming and the comments are being left.  Because that will dry up, sad to say.  It won’t dry up entirely, but we all have our good blogging days and our bad ones.

But it can also be a good thing if your blog or your readership or your comment levels aren’t where you want them to be today.  There is always the chance for a change in the future.

That is what makes life — and writing — interesting.

*******

Take Five:

Five years ago, I started this blog.  Every year on my blogoversary, I give myself a word to concentrate on for the year.

Year One (which ended up describing my first year of blogging): Connections
Year Two (set on my first blogoversary): Action
Year Three (set on my second blogoversary): Listening
Year Four (set on my third blogoversary): Tune
Year Five (set on my fourth blogoversary): Own

This year, I thought the word would have something to do with the Prompt-ly list since it is absolutely the project I’m concentrating on this year.

But I had to write a letter this week to someone who means a great deal to me to explain why she means a great deal to me.  I had to take this very emotional thing — love — and put it into words.

In trying to pinpoint it, the best way I could explain why she means a great deal to me is that she recognizes that the world is inadvertently a cold place.  That while we may do caring acts from time to time — helping an old lady cross the street or listening to a friend for an hour — our day is mostly spent in bubbles where we focus solely on ourselves even as we perform tasks for others.

We don’t mean to shut each other out, but we do it (and sociologists could probably explain why it’s actually necessary for humans to do this in order to survive and thrive).  Someone asks us for a favour, and we ignore them.  Someone admits they’re lonely, and we don’t reach out to let them know we’re listening.

So we shut each other out — albeit inadvertently (most likely due to the constraints of time).  At the same time, it is our relationships that make the difference in this world, that heat this cold world.  We notice those moments that people leave their bubble to enter our own because those moments are what makes the difference between people feeling supported and people feeling alone.

Humans are not meant to be alone.

Think about the emails you’ve saved because someone said something that meant the world for you to hear.  Or the times when we’ve gushed about how someone took the time to converse with us or read our blog.  We have such gratitude for human interactions — even the small ones.

Yet even knowing how good it makes us feel to have someone interact with us; to reach their hand into our life and let us know that we’re not alone, we don’t spend nearly enough time doing this.  Perhaps out of survival — we need to focus on ourselves in order to keep moving forward — though I can’t help but think this is counterintuitive.  Wouldn’t we go so much farther if we all spent more time focused on interacting with others since it could come full circle and have people interact with us.  Don’t we accomplish more together than we ever do on our own?

So, my word for this year, for year six (on my fifth blogoversary):

Pop.

As in, I’m going to take this year to try to pop my bubble each day.  To be conscious of reaching out to others and making that connection count.  To engage in conversations.  To help where I can help.

Even if I only increase my time outside by bubble by five minutes a day, that’s amounts to 1825 or over 30 hours of time each year that I am engaged in community by actively interacting.

Will I be able to always pop my bubble for everyone else who needs me to pop my bubble and focus on them?  Of course not.  I’m a human being who needs to practice guitar for at least a half hour each night, do my job and volunteer work, and spend countless hours trying to come up with new and interesting ways to annoy Josh and the twins (please, that takes A LOT of brain power).  So in advance, I’m sorry if you slip through the cracks and my bubble doesn’t pop.  It isn’t on purpose, though I know that’s cold comfort.

*******

Five takes for my fifth blogoversary.  Five years ago, I started this blog.  And I am so happy that I did.  And so grateful that you are here.

And you better not leave this post bare of comments just because you used up your blogoversary wishes on this first one!  Pop that bubble!

This is the first part of a two-part blog post.  One post simply grew too long to contain everything I wanted to say.

*******

Take One:

Five years ago, I started this blog.

The end.

*******

Take Two:

Five years ago, I started this blog.  When I read about blogoversaries back when I first started this blog, I couldn’t fathom celebrating my own.  Certainly not my five-year one.  And while you eight- or ten-year bloggers may scoff at my piddly five-year marker, those who are just starting out are probably looking at this number the way I did five years ago.  How the hell does it happen?

How does someone open a post box and write a new post, day after day after day?  I have never stepped away from the blog for longer than a few days.  How do you blog the same holidays year after year?  Life keeps revolving — years are circular — but blogs are linear.  They keep moving in a straight line of events while life circles back around, the same themes constantly surfacing, the same foibles revealed, the same struggles fought.

You feel love, you feel love, you feel love.

And you need to keep writing this linear project, keeping it fresh and interesting to yourself because if you’re bored, then what is the point?

You reach a five-year anniversary, you write several thousand posts, simply by doing it.  By falling in love with your blog and taking all that comes with that relationship.  The sweet moments when the comments are high, the dry moments where you can’t think about what to write.  The blog posts that bring you nothing but tears.  The blog posts that you would cry about if you ever lost.

Because love is never easy.  Love is messy; and it’s wonderful in its messiness.  And if you love your blog, you too will one day look at the calendar and realize that you are celebrating a five-year blogoversary.

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Take Three:

Five years ago, I started this blog.  People have asked me before if I’ve ever thought about walking away from it.  Of course I have thought about it.  I think it is natural to be in a mood and take out that mood on something or someone you love.  You know who will be forgiving and who won’t be.

You probably just made a face and thought to yourself, but a blog is an inanimate object.  It’s like saying that you’ve taken out your mood on a dish.

But you’re not inanimate, are you?  Every reader is a living, breathing human.

(You are human, right?  The aliens haven’t arrived yet, right?  I am a little freaked out from the Falling Skies opening episode.)

Therefore, you take a chance when you take out your mood on a blog because it’s like coral — you think you are standing on a rock, something that can’t feel pain or react to the pressure of your foot, and then you discover that coral is actually a living organism, capable of dying.

A blog is quite similar.  If you think of it as an inanimate object, you’re being careless.  Blogs are living organisms with very real people attached to the word core.  People who are affected by what you choose to place on the screen.  They will laugh or they will cry or they will think; but they can also walk away angry, frustrated, or filled with grief.

I am human, and I lash out just like every other human from time to time.  I take out my mood on this blog, and I think about walking away from it.  But like all good relationships, this blog has the elasticity to bend without breaking.  You pull away.  I pull away.  And then we regroup and come back together.  And I write yet again.

*******

Takes Four and Five coming soon.