16: Talk about the best party you’ve ever been to.
I have been to so many parties! And so many of them have ended with me laughing and smiling and looking around thinking ‘gosh I love these people, I know great people’! Which is my measure for a successful party now! But okay, last year one of my local friends had a baby animal party. Did you know there are companies who just have stables of baby animals you can RENT FOR PARTIES? Because now I do AND IT’S THE BEST. They usually do children’s parties and were actually so pleased that all of us were adults. So I got to spend an afternoon with like, ten other adults playing with puppies and bunnies and pigs and chickens and like BABY GOATS. The goat was my favorite. Honestly, I would own a goat.
What a good day that was. We should do that again.
24: Talk about something someone told you that meant a lot.
About a year after the break up with the ex, when I was getting ready to move to Boston, a friend I don’t talk to a lot called to see if I wanted to hang out with her and some other folks in Tampa for a weekend. I had to break the news to her about the break up, because that’s just what you do after you’ve been with someone forever and everyone assumes your lives are still connected. Anyway, her response was something along the lines of ‘oh thank god, you know the last time you both visited [her boyfriend] asked me why you were together, he said that girl is so full of light and that boy is so boring.’ And look. I don’t usually believe or glom onto the nice things people say about me, but something about ‘so full of light’ really got stuck in my hair or something because I remember it and think about it whenever I’m feeling like a terrible person who will never find love again. At the end of the day, I’m so full of light and I can everything I want.
37: Talk about someone you thought you were in love with.
Oh man, so here’s a thing. In college I spent a year living with a girl from the car club. It was great. Her boyfriend was a really good guy who would hang out and help us when we needed it. Even when we got high one night and decided to paint our living room red and then realized neither of us could reach near the vaulted ceiling even on a ladder with a long poled brush. Her pets were lovely to come home to most of the time. Her best friend was a wonderful and fun and silly and smart, as was she, obviously. But also, it was good when it was just the two of us. We had small adventures and we screamed and laughed and talked and on my twenty-first birthday she took me to a bar we’d been to many times and danced and got drinks from strangers and then she held my hair in the back of her car at the end of the night as I was sick and cried because my own boyfriend couldn’t be there with us and I missed him.
We smoked a lot of pot and she taught me to shotgun. We drove around really fast with the windows down and the music blaring. She was very open about being bisexual and a vegetarian and all sorts of things that had never been presented to me as options before and she taught me a lot along the way. And then we had a falling out because I am a contrary jerk who is always straining against the perception that people are treating me like a child, which to be fair she sometimes did. (She was several years older and just knew more.)
But here is this also, I was not only straining against this idea that she knew better, but also this idea that I had more feelings for her than I was willing to admit. Now I will freely admit that I was a bit in love with her. I write poems about it from time to time, when I think of her. I put this under thought because it wasn’t love as I understand it now. It was a little bit lust and a whole lot of wonder and a desire to also be independent and beautiful and free. I haven’t talked to her in years and years. We stayed friends for a bit after I moved out, but she moved to another state and I’m bad at keeping in touch and now I just think about her often and hope she’s doing well. She taught me a lot. I probably owe her a lot. An apology at the least.