#haleyhopeg

[bellarkevalentines]

For @haleyhopeg, from your valentine.

[metastation]

This is just out of sheer curiosity, but how do you two know each other? When I first started listening to the podcast, I thought you might have met through the show, but you keep referencing knowing each other for 17 years! I really admire your cross-country best friendship, especially since I'm about to graduate my undergrad and all my best friends are about to scatter in a similar way. If you don't mind sharing, how did Clarin come to be? :)

We met in college! I (claire) was a sophomore and Erin was a freshman. This was like, I think, 2000-2001? There was a cluster of people in Erin’s friend posse who were in a play that I wrote, so I got to know kind of the whole gang after that, and then the next semester I ended up moving into their dorm section, and we just clicked immediately.  If there’s such a thing as falling in friend-love with someone at first sight, that is how I felt about the girl in the olive khaki military surplus jumpsuit with an encyclopedic knowledge of The Monkees and Jane Austen.  She was just immediately my favorite person.  It really happened that fast. 

We were best friends all through college, and then she and her husband Jordan (also a friend of mine; I actually met him first) moved to Portland for a few years after they got married, so we got to see each other a lot.  Jordan’s best friend lives in Portland too, so there were a lot of years of beach trips and game nights and hanging out at our favorite bar drinking flaming Spanish coffees. 

A lot happened in those years; Jordan and I both lost parents.  It was really hard for a long time being so far apart for such a long time; Erin flew out to Portland in August 2015 to see my play, and we’ve seen each other twice since then - I was there last Thanksgiving and then she was here last May for her birthday when we got tattoos and interviewed Mike Beach - but before that, I think we hadn’t seen each other for at least four years, which was AWFUL.

One thing that’s been really amazing, though, is how the show and the podcast have like brought us even closer together, in a crazy way.  When you love someone so much but you’re apart for a long time, it feels like every time you talk you have to like cram everything in and do all the big life stuff - marriage, career, family drama, life, etc. - and all the little day-to-day stuff that really forms the foundation of a relationship can sort of be hard to keep up with.  So after S2 ended and Erin was like “Claire I’m hooked on this show COME BE HOOKED ON IT WITH ME” we were like Gchatting nonstop while I binged the first two seasons and exchanging HUNDREDS  of emails and talking on the phone for HOURS, and I know this might sound kind of silly but like this show had had such a huge impact on our relationship because it was this big fun thing we could share together.  And then the podcast being like a project we took on together that keeps us really connected all the time has been amazing.  It’s still like so, so hard to live this far apart, and we’re both 35 and you hit a point where you’re kind of like “…. unless a miracle happens we’re probably not ever going to live in the same city again.”  And there are times when that’s really difficult, because we love each other such a ridiculous amount.  But we also feel really lucky that we hung onto each other for this long.

CLAIRIN FOREVER

–C

[failvillain]

You are honestly my favorite The 100 fan. You're the chillest in the whole fandom. I know you're not gone yet but I just thought I would go ahead and say it.

this is me right now