This is a post of a personal nature as it is an ode and celebration of one of my closest friends. It's her 22nd birthday. I will go out on a limb here and say that everyone has friends but my mom has always said that if you can count the amount of really really good, deep friendships that you have, even just on one hand, you are very lucky. These friends care about you so deeply, it is quite unfathomable. They will tell you the things that are hard to say and hear because they value you as a friend, as a human, higher than they do the friendship. This means that they will put keeping you safe in the long run above the risk that what they say will result in you being momentarily angry/hurt/resentful towards them. Jen has done this for me on countless occasions and I couldn't be more grateful. She has been a bit of a lifesaver.
There are several (millions) of fond memories that Jen and I have. I would love to recount them all but an entire blog of its own will be required (what do you think, Jen? Next project?). I think we can both agree that one of the best memories of our friendship is the night we founding ourselves aching with laughter and thinking, "wow, this is really exciting, I think I'm becoming good friends with this person!". It was the dawn of a new year, only the 2nd day of January. I remember because it was Tweede Nuwe Jaar and getting to Long Street that night was crazy. Jen and I are both the type of people whose idea of a night well spent involves tea and chats about everything from reciting SNL skits to our futile and inconsequential existence. We both, however, found ourselves on Long Street, in a club, not really sure how and why we were there (it was for a friend's birthday, so I guess we did know). What we definitely didn't know the answer to was how and why we ended up being the last of our friends to leave. Jen was being pursued by a very eager young man named Vinnie who clearly found Jersey Shore very inspiring. My night had taken quite the opposite course of events; I had gone with tentative but unrealistic hopes of the night taking a certain turn with a certain person who certainly had a strong hold on me. Unsurprisingly, my hopes did not come to pass so I spent the end of the night trying to lift my spirits by downing spirits. Crushes are the best, aren't they? When we decided to make our way home, Vinnie somehow managed to find Jen even after we had been enveloped into the outside crowd on Long Street. She only managed to shake him off by physically getting into an Uber and driving away. I still don't think he has gotten the hint. Vinnie is probably still wondering up and down Long Street, wondering why Jen is taking so long to come back. Perhaps she got stuck in traffic? I cannot encapsulate everything that made the night so bizarre, it was just one of those nights. We got back to my house in the wee hours of the morning, exhausted but still very wide awake. I generally take quite a long time to become comfortable around a person and, at this point, Jen and I were more mutual friends of friends. I was rather nervous that having her stay over would be awkward but that couldn't have been less of the case. In our state of being over-tired, over the limit and just quite over the mind-field that is any type of romantic interaction, the obligatory post-night-out-pre-pass-out debrief of the evening's happenings dissolved into fits of uncontrollable laughter. Every attempt at "Okay, okay, we need to go to sleep now, okay, goodnight..." ... "you're right, you're right...night" .... and then one of us would start up again. It was hopeless. The bond created between two people who laugh themselves into a state at which your lungs and spleen are potentially at risk of rupturing, is one that is rather hard to break.
I'm not sure if that whole memory is more of a "be there moment". Perhaps it is, but is one of my favourite memories, not just with Jen but ever. It would be the first one to spring up in my Pensieve's 25 Most Watched playlist. A hop, skip and a jump +/- 4 years later and Jen is now one of my best friends. We have lived together on a street with a fairy-tale name in a flat that consisted of the three most perfectly matched flat mates imaginable. The first letter of all our names literally spell out J-E-N. I mean, come now. We had a tea list, a singing washing machine, a monthly "flat-aversary" and a kitchen that has seen break-downs (both the dance kind and the emotional kind), heart-to-hearts, operatic performances, recreations of Kristen Wiig skits, horrendous experiments with gin mixers, biblical floods of tea, and everything in between. Our adventures together in this flat was cut short far too soon but that makes it even more of a treasured time.
Jen, I have said this many times but it remains as genuine as the first time it was said. You are the personification of a cup of tea, a warm hug, freshly cut grass, sheets straight of the dryer, a fluffy blanket in mid-winter, and a big sigh of relief. It bewilders me daily how I got so lucky to have crossed paths with you. You deserve not only the best birthday but the best every day. A cringe worthy line, I know, but sometimes it has to be said and the crowd must groan and roll their eyes. I can assure you that Jen and I are in the front row of that crowd.
Throughout my attempts at writing this very heartfelt post, I have been trying to block out the rather sad scene of my lonely and confused dog romancing his pillow. It has been going on for unusually (yet quite impressively) long time.