Origins

285 miles. 5 hours and 18 minutes. 40 dollars in gas, 20 in tolls. 4 tunnels. 3 rest stops. Two people each standing on the different ends. It wasn’t a love story, or anything remotely close. It was a friendship. The push and pull, the polar opposites that somehow always found themselves drawn to each other. Wasn’t this our story?

At the delicate age of 4 we met. Me sitting under the table afraid of the fast-paced playroom before me; I concealed myself in a Dr. Seuss book though I barely knew how to read. You spotted me; I was easy prey. And from that moment, we were inseparable. We rushed into play-dates, eager to get the prettiest dress in the box of clothes that the pre-school teacher was embarrassed to say she once thought were stylish and chic. (The 80’s were great with their bright colors, frills and leg warmers, weren’t they Mrs. Painter?) We played house with the other boys and girls in the class, developed schemes to steal the paint and paper from the boy with a head too large for his glasses. Oh how he cried, how we laughed.

The first separation occurred, and we lost each other, lost contact and virtually all memory of the pair we once were. AM kindergarten for me, PM for you, just missing each other as the buses crossed paths. We had our own worlds, each with the crusts cut off, the stories in the afternoon sun, the birthday tin that had the fake candle and the stickers piled on the inside. And this strange process continued, passing one another on the monkey bars, looking at the other and never realizing where we had seen that face.

Soon enough we were reunited. My friends were, as Barney said, your friends, and your friends were mine. Tuesday night Brownie meetings, the camping trips, cookie sales and group activities brought us close once more. Little league cheerleading, pom-poms and bleached white Keds, hair neatly French-braided. These were the days. The summer time. With the sun beating down in the high sky and the beauty of it all. The day I taught you how to swim, the matching bikes, pink of course, with the basket on front, streamers cascading from the ends of the handle bars. Remember when you crashed into the red shed? Remember when we lived at each other’s houses weeks at a time? We thought we had seen it all, been through it all; the water fights, riding together to and from travel softball games, you taking a punch right in the jaw while intervening between my brother and I. BFF, the notes said.

Then: We spent a year and a half in silence, not speaking, barely acknowledging; moving in different circles, brushing shoulders on each turn but never meeting each other’s eyes. We walked with heads full of dreams, mouths dropping lines of some deranged lies festered from some unknown source. We became apart, adrift, different; two different species entirely. You spent the mornings with your feet on the dashboard, toking up in the back row of the parking lot. 6th spot left of the 2nd light post. While I walked on by, Vic Firths jutting out of my backpack, headphones blaring, audible to a 3 foot radius, converse beating in time with each step. Distant planets sharing the same universe.

Yet I still know your favorite color, what movie you absolutely hate and the things you fear. I know your brand of vodka you drink, your tequila, your beer, your rum. You sing along to Jason Aldean’s “She’s Country,” have seen All Time Low three times in the last year or so, used to smoke Marlboro Gold’s 1OO’s and it was in Allen’s car you took your first hit of marijuana. You wear your hatred like your eyeliner. Thick. Bold. Noticed. But I see past this façade. I know underneath the tattoos, beyond the piercings and the caked on makeup, there is a girl that loves to watch the Disney Channel on weekends, who is afraid of spiders and who is kind and actually has a heart, regardless of the fact all your organs probably swim in the amount of alcohol you consume.

And you know me. Know that I am more than the bright blue eyes wearing the pale pink. Loquacious and verbose yet hiding in the shadows everyone casts. You remember telling me I date the same assholes over and over, you know I drink my coffee with two sugar packets, non-dairy creamer. You know I wish the band would get back together, that one day I hope to see my words in magazines. You know I hate bugs and elephants, that almost everything can agitate me.

And this list is what brought us back together, picking up where we left off. We grew older, not wiser. We went to all the wrong parties and for that had all the stories to tell; I signed the excuses, you planned the day. I was the straight-A student, National Honor Society President, the member of every student body imaginable and you were the bum-out, the free-spirit, the rebel; never such an unmatched pair, but never a greater. The bond that holds us together has never really been secure, it flexes; fluctuates. But we carry on. Side by side for it all, with its many miles, hours and yet we are still one; that bond will never break, besides, you know too much anyway.