the art of never sleeping through a moment of your twenties.

Since I was little, everyone has always commented on my memory. It’s not genius level or anything that would be remotely helpful beyond spiraling in the privacy of my bedroom, but still, my memory is pretty crystal clear. Especially when it comes to what’s important, or more accurately, what felt important.

I’ve always loved the call of the mourning dove. Their five part hymn suited the childhood soundtrack of early morning coffee on the patio with my grandparents in a way that made everything seem a little like magic. Even still, whenever I hear it it feels a lot like home. Sometimes when I’m Elizabethtown mentally photographing a moment for a future memory I swear I feel like I can hear mourning doves.

The art of never sleeping through a moment of your twenties: a story about a group of girlfriends. The way that they lean on each other without having to ever say thank you. Sometimes not even realizing how much they’ve leaned because it was as natural as breathing

It was one of those nights right on the cusp of summer when it felt like the whole world was cracking open and everything was so close to coming back to life. The kind of big change that wasn’t terrifying, that didn’t make you feel homesick for something that you couldn’t quite place. It was the type of long overdue shift that you were waiting for, blinking through the days just to get to. 

You know those nights where you can just feel in the pit of your stomach that you’re making a memory, and maybe it’s just a memory of nothing really all that big? Like sitting in the backseat of your grandmother’s car with your forehead pressed up against the glass, counting traffic cones until they blur and seem like they’re sliding down a conveyer belt, and you’re thinking about how one day this moment in time won’t even be one that you remember when you think back on the timeline of your life. But for some reason it just sticks.

Now you’re in your twenties, and you can still smell the leather seats and hear NPR playing on the radio and feel the third person pause of reality where little 6 year old you was aware that this moment was happening right now, that right now doesn’t last forever, that one day this moment probably won’t even be a memory. 

Anyway, this felt a lot like that.

Like my skin was buzzing and my blood was singing and every video montage you’ve seen of time lapsed flowers blooming pebbled with morning dew cut to blades of grass shooting out of the soil and trees once again turning green. 

My best friends were all piled into the same car with the roof down. Driving on dirt roads and screaming at the top of our lungs until our throats burned while the air roared right along with us and the stars seemed to shine a little brighter directly above us. And I couldn’t help but think that this was one of those moments. A flash of knowing that a lasting imprint had been notched on my belt to mark a feeling I’d felt homesick for before it was even over.

You don’t get to just have many of those moments. They aren’t promised to you. The universe doesn’t have them woven onto your thread of experience when your path was being mapped out all those moons ago. They just happen. They’re just little gifts sprinkled through that you have to be the perfect combination of lucky and grateful to be able to reach out and grasp them and mark them as yours.

You have to be awake.

And the funny thing is, when I flip through my mental book of moments, shuffling them like a mismatched deck of cards that’s felt the fingers of all the hands who matter to you thumbing through them, they all have the very same thing in common. Every single one of those moments features those very same girls.

It’s lucky, really. Lucky in the kind of way that makes you want to hold it close to your chest, tucked into the lining of your jacket like a coat full of contraband. Like the lottery ticket you win and don’t tell anyone about. Lucky in the way that makes you fiercely loyal, unquestioningly protective, irrationally jealous of all the time spent with their boyfriends (just me?), and undoubtedly grateful.

I hate the title best friend. I always have. It’s just never felt like enough to describe the life preserving relationships I have. My best friends were all of the things that are made up of people you love; my roommates, my friends, my confidants, my sisters, my soulmates, my safety nets, my ground zero, my to the moon and further and back, my youtube tutorial, my eye contact from across the room wordless telepathy, my long drives with the speakers blaring, my silent bed sharing phone scrolling, my highest highs, my drunkest drunks, my gut wrenching sobs, my belly aching laughs, my everything and then some more. All of that stuffed into five humans whose souls mine will forever be linked to beyond the days of old and grey. They’re the something I never had and always wanted.

The ones I’ll always call to tell them to go outside and look at the moon

I have so much more to say on this, and on this night. So much so that I could ramble on and on, to far past the stage of finger cramping. So we’ll call this open ended for now. I’ll come back here and say more when I find the words.