Life and Love are Inconvenient, Get Over It and Get in the Car
Photo by @averieclaire on Unsplash
I’ve been thinking about my friend Laura a lot lately. I’ve even been reading her blog that still exists in the whispers of the internet just to hear her voice from time to time.
She passed away in August of 2021, just shy of her 30th birthday. She was buried in her favorite blouse and Michael Kors earrings that she wore constantly, always dressed ready for an adventure.
She once told me that she wanted to go get donuts, to which I said, “Okay, sure. Let’s go.” Then she told me she wanted to go to a specific donut shop, her favorite, two towns away, to which I said, “Um, why?” followed by, “But, I have homework.”
She took another, more adventurous-on-the-spot friend and brought a box of donuts to class that night for everyone because, of course she did. When she showed up with the box I thought, “Wow, she really did that” then, “Wow, I guess it’s not that big of a deal to just get up and decide to do that?”
I told Laura nearly every time we hung out that I didn’t know why she had added me to her extensive collection of friends. I was not shiny or all that much fun and I frequently poo poo-ed her plans because of how “out-there” they seemed to me (Why do we have to go to that one bar in Cincinnati when Dayton also like, has bars? Why are we filling out a bracket for The Bachelor? Why are you asking me to take a double shot with you even though I said a single one is fine?).
Recounting how instinctively un-fun I was (am?) makes me cringe, especially because during every inconvenient adventure she asked me to go on, I had the time of my life.
I know this about myself, that I prefer to be in sweatpants on the couch with my favorite pizza and a book or movie, and that if I go out I would like to know about it well in advance and also know that “out” will have all the same accommodations as “in,” like a comfy place to sit, water available whenever I want it, not too much noise, and only people I like or at least, don’t dislike.
This is a big ask of life, to present you only with what is precisely comfortable while also being exciting and new. It is actually kind of, impossible?
Laura was diagnosed with cancer after I had only known her for a few weeks during my first year of our grad school program. I thought that maybe her brush with the existential had made her even more ready to steer life her way, get donuts wherever and whenever the hell she wanted and take everyone with her.
But throughout our friendship, I got to meet many of her friends from her undergrad life who told just as colorful stories about her propensity for a good time - even on a weeknight, even in bad weather, even when she may have felt down or discouraged or cold.
Laura apparently didn’t need the threat of a short life to live it, she arrived on Earth ready to party and you were getting an invitation even if you were a grouch like me.
Since her passing, I decided to take on the onus of having fun, of saying yes to what might be a good thing, even if it is packaged in inconvenience, even if I have homework or a headache or laundry.
To clarify, I am not good at this - I approach fun with resistance and always pack heavy, trying to anticipate every possible anything so that I can have a solution in my purse or a plan of attack in my head. But even though I am not good at it, the fact that I even try to drive without one foot on the brake is a direct result of my friendship with this powerhouse of a human.
Here are some incredible things I’ve done in the last year because Laura would have made me:
Flown, a lot. I’ve flown to visit family and flown to attend a conference and flown to attend weddings, even though I greatly dislike it.
Eaten at a restaurant that also serves food I am allergic to.
Gone out for ice cream even though I had already put on my comfy clothes and decided not to leave the house.
Taken my dog to a new dog park in a different city all by myself. I even had to pay to enter.
Bought an outfit specifically for an event.
Attended a writing group online, then one in-person in my city, then one in-person in a major city 35 minutes away.
Saw three friends in one day while I was home for a week in the summer - a breakfast date, a lunch date, and a dinner date.
Sent long texts, cards, gift cards, or sometimes actual mailed gifts to my friends or their kids for their occasions.
Wrote and shared my writing online, even when I thought it might be irrelevant or pitiful or silly or “too much” of something.
Said "Yes!” and meant it, to same-day plans.
Saw the Barbie movie, even though I didn’t really want to.
Did a three-mile hike to a waterfall, even though I wanted to quit way earlier and say “I’ve seen a waterfall.”
Started an Instagram for my dog.
Brought baked goods to work to say thank-you to my coworkers.
Went to a party downtown with some Gen-Z friends and even took an Uber there, so I couldn’t think of my car in the back of my mind and dip out whenever I wanted (it got too loud, people got too drunk, I got too hot, I got too hungry).
While these might all seem like small things, many of them are things that I would have been able to talk myself out of much easier had I never had a friend like Laura.
But this isn’t a post about how life handed me a really great friend I didn’t deserve, who changed my life, and now I’m the best “Yes Woman” around. Hardly.
This is a post about how life handed me a really great friend I didn’t deserve, who changed my life, and now I have her voice stuck in my head, laughing and shoving me into experiences that I often do not want to have. Sometimes I listen to the Laura voice, sometimes I listen to my own stupid brain.
Here are some of the times I didn’t listen to my beautiful angel friend and instead listened to the grouch within me:
Didn’t buy tickets to Taylor Swift on resale because I was too hesitant to drop the cash, so my boyfriend bought them for me.
Didn’t buy tickets to Armchair Expert Live because I was too hesitant to drop the cash, so my boyfriend bought them for me.
Said “maybe next time” to visiting my sister’s downtown apartment after we’d had dinner in the city because I wanted to go home and take a shower and go to bed early.
Said “maybe next time” to getting a tattoo with my other sister because I was too hesitant to drop the cash or to bet on an artist who seemed “too available” for an appointment.
Said, “LOL, no” to watching a holiday parade in our new town, even though we were already there for dinner, because we didn’t bring chairs and it was cold and also the parade was not for another two hours and so what would we even do in the meantime?
Life is inconvenient.
Love and relationships are inconvenient.
But life and love and memories just aren’t going to happen exclusively on the couch, in my favorite pajamas, after being freshly showered (I know…damn).
Life and love and memories happen when you have other things to do.
Sometimes - most times - all of it happens when the weather is shit and your mood is also a bit shit and you forgot to brush your teeth that morning and your boss sent you an email without exclamation points or smiley faces and you begin ruthlessly second-guessing your career and the city you live in and whether you should rent or buy.
Life and love and memories and relationships happen when you are overwhelmed and underwhelmed, when you have to mail that Amazon return and when you need to pick up that prescription for the dog and call your mom back before she starts to think you resent her for that bowl cut she gave you in 1997 because it was “in” and also “free.”
Life and love and memories and friendships happen when you have to drive far or take a plane or book an Uber, when you have to exchange too many texts in order to make a plan and when calendars are too confusing and the only option is an on-the-fly FaceTime that you hope gets picked up.
Making the good stuff happen is annoying.
Life is annoying.
Life is annoying and hilarious and inconvenient and good and sometimes, simply the worst.
There will never be a “New Year, New Me.”
There will only ever be the same me trying to learn the lessons that tripped up the former me a million times, and that continue to do so.
There will only ever be the me who likes what she likes and really dislikes what she doesn’t like.
But there will always be the me who acknowledges how completely lucky she is in this life, and how stupid she would be if she didn’t keep the love of a friendship alive and let it change her and shove her out the door and into her own life, while smiling and nodding at the heavens as she ties her shoes and says, “Thanks alot, Laura.”
Inconveniently yours,
Emily Rose // Miss Magnolia
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