Stranger Things Have Happened

Oh ignorance, you really are bliss. I miss you. Sometimes I wish I knew less about people and their lives, but this thing called Facebook exists. It lets all the nosy people in the world be "friends" with each other and "connect" through the internet. It tells me if someone is pregnant or just had a baby or is getting married and shows me pictures of everyone's kids trick or treating. I hate it. I love it. I can't rid myself of it.

I go on Facebook almost everyday, whether I want to or not. Usually I just roll my eyes and look at people's crappy pictures, but other times I am intrigued by a status and most know more. Today was one of those days, because in my newsfeed was a vague status about funeral arrangements by the brother of someone I was friends with in high school. Then the first comment underneath it was also by him and it read "This is for my sister Ruthie." I stopped. I paused. I was in shock.

Someone who had been one of my closest and funnest friends in high school had died, but that was all I knew. It didn't say what happened and that was all I could think about, but I didn't want to pry and ask him. So I just sat back in shock, kind of speechless, which is rare for me. I always have something to say.

I was sad and brought to tears, but what really got me was how weird it felt to be that sad about losing someone I haven't even seen in ten years. Sure, we were friends on Facebook, but she didn't live here and I don't think she would've ever considered living here in a million years. I have spent my whole morning sad about a girl I knew in high school, which was a long time ago. She was a really cool, fun, and sweet girl though. And a bad influence, but in the funnest possible way.

I'm pretty honest with myself about how lazy of a friend I can be. I don't write, I don't call, I don't send flowers. I rarely go out of my way to talk to people. Its not that I don't consider people to be my friends, its that I don't really want to have to wash my hair and go places. That's why my real friends are people who I can see every couple of months and just pick up where we left off, like it wasn't a different season the last time we hung out.

The truth about parenthood is that it does make it harder to have relationships with people you don't live with, it takes that much out of you, especially when your kids are small. Its totally worth it, but its also worth it to maintain at least a couple of friends who you didn't give birth to, if only to have someone to talk to about how crazy your children make you.

I will always be kind of sad that my friend left us all so early in life (cause I suppose 30 really isn't that old in the big picture). And even though we never saw each other anymore I still have lots of memories from when we were young and irresponsible and really kind of stupid, just hanging out and watching SNL and dreaming about cookies. We both stuck out in the same kind of way, a little awkward and different, but she was way cooler than me and just being friends with her made me feel cooler. Good friends stick with you, even when they move away, even when you're all grown up with kids of your own, and even when you don't see each other for years at a time.