Guidelines, Timelines & My, How Time Flies.

I am a very different person today than I was one year ago.
I mean, if we're doing something right in our lives, hopefully we can all say this every year. But seriously, in terms of personal growth - this has been a pretty fucking banner year for me. Granted, I am still working on a lot - still have a hard time checking my mail and paying parking tickets and being vulnerable in general - but, simply put, I was a hot mess one year ago. A seriously Hot Mess. I had no sense of autonomy, no sense of direction other than down - I was simply in a downward spiral, feeling totally unworthy of love.

I was far too thin, far too wild & far too sad. Why? My internal value system totally out of whack & was wholly dependent on my relationships with men. Since I was eighteen (thats about ten and a half years) I have spent - hold on, let me grab a calculator... about nine years in relationships. And that isn't counting dating or 'seeing someone'. That's nine years of hearing, 'Oh, you're So&So's Girlfriend.' Really, I have always had a boyfriend. And in most cases, a back up boyfriend to lessen the pain of breaking up with my real boyfriend.

Timeline A: The Boyfriends.

As a result, I was lacking the internal values that it took to be a good friend. Self absorbed, with my entire identity being wrapped up in being So&So'sGirlfriend for so long, I lacked the skills to maintain quality relationships with other girls.
I really had no other form of identity aside from whatever relationship I was in.

Timeline B, (the Orange Line):

S

We should totally hang out sometime!

How many times have you heard this? Women are notorious for saying this to each other and never following up. These empty phone number exchanges happen usually in bar bathrooms over vodka tonics with the acquaintance whom, for some reason, is your best friend in the place that night.
And rarely, if not never, do we call. Maybe we'll friend request each other, maybe we'll write 'so good too see you! xo' on one another's walls and then we move on - 'liking' the occasional status update as we go.
Which can kind of make making friends in your twenties difficult. Especially if you didn't have any friends to begin with; whether it be because you broke up with your boyfriend or moved to a far off city in search of yourself. Its hard to make friends as women; I've always said that, when it comes to meeting new people, women (especially young women) typically don't like other women until they have a reason to whereas men tend to like other men until they have a reason not to.

It was Veteran's Day of last year, and I had the day off; my phone rang right as I was getting onto PCH. It was sunny, and warmish for November. So, exactly one year ago, after flailing and failing for a few months post-breakup, I got the phone call that would change my life. It sounds dramatic I know, but the reality is - It really did change my life. And, Idobelieve, it changed her life as well. I had really been struggling at that point because I had very few friends other than some anchoring past coworkers & Bijou, - really, the only other girlfriend I had in my tiny town was my friend for one reason - and one reason only: because she had just broken up with her boyfriend too. We could wallow in loneliness together, but had nothing else in common. So imagine my surprise when it was an acquaintance that I had run into a few weeks prior - an old roommate of one of my closest college friends. We had done the whole song&dance drunk at a bar, the good ole' We Should Totally Hang Out, but I'll be honest - I never thought she'd call. We made plans to meet for sushi in a half hour. I just remember sitting there on the patio, waiting for her to arrive, thinking -

Well, I wonder how this is going to go. I really don't know this girl.

We had never hung out before, other than by chance years before in big groups & to be honest (mostly out of jealousy) I hadn't thought much of her. (Okay, totally out of jealousy.) Lunch went well; we laughed and actually had stuff to talk about - and, I being 'new' to girlfriends, basically talked about mysef the entire time. Imagine that.
This was my First 'Date' with Goldi.
Problem was, initially Goldi and I were a little too wild together. Maybe a lot too wild. Between that, and with me re-learning how to be a good friend in general, there were a few missteps in the first months of our friendship. But during the short lived reunion with my Ex, I found myself missing this new friend, wishing I was out to dinner with her & not sitting on the couch with my Ex. It really wasn't until the morning after I broke up him - and I called her & a couple other girls that I had gotten to be friends with over the same time frame, Honey & Bijou - to join me for my Break Up Brunch #1; it wasn't until after that brunch, when she looked at me as we were leaving our (now) favorite patio, and said,

'Alright, now what? Today is your day.'  

That was the moment, for me, that she I became the true friends we are now. Still wild, though more aware of it, we slowly started bonding in a way that was sort of borderline obsessive. But in a really good way; in a way where we finally - after a series of sort of poor decisions - we looked at eachother on her couch one night and made a pact.
A pact to start acting like grown ups, to stop acting like we were college-aged twits.
To hold one another accountable for their actions.
And if we couldn't, as friends, do that for one another - then we couldn't be friends with one another.

We Sparkle.

Our new (tongue-in-cheek) motto was, Be classy. We decided on more restaurant checks, and fewer bar tabs. More patio parties but now without the bottomless mimosas. We started acting like the most mature seventh grade best friends two twentysomethings could be. Not that we haven't had Fun, with nights running with the grunions on the beach, of singing Lisa Loeb at the top of our lungs on her couch, of tearful I Love You Man conversations over red wine, of spats and of eye rolls; but we have sparkled and sung our way from Winter to Fall. And of that pact, we both internalized it; it became an agreement to ourselves and not so much to each other.

Not a Bromance, a 'Bra'-mance.

Over the course of the past year, I have gained a reallysuperclassy best friend, and through her, a myriad of other amazing friends. And yes, mine and Goldi's relationship has evolved initofitself the past year, between boys and boyfriends and Dutchmen and the curveballs of Life in general, but the reality is - because of that pact; we have both grown up so much this year.
Because of this shift in my own value system; the idea that I was no longer defined by boyfriends, but by my own Friends, my life's little graph now looks like this:

Timeline C, (the Red Line):

See that upswing? F yeah.
Because these days, even though I apparently have a boyfriend again, I am not defined by that.
I am Me. I am defined by what I call, my Collection of Blonds (with a few brunette's and a redhead thrown in for good measure). I am defined by the world I have created for myself. And when my Dutchman was here for a month, though I was a bit harder to reach via telephone on Planet BIOHF3W, our interactions with my circle - the double dates, & happy hours, the wedding & the whole damn experience - it really just amplified how great my life is here to me. That I have so many supportive friends; so many wonderful friends. I was amazed by that snapshot of my life that the Dutchman saw, by the support I have felt all around me for almost a year now.
And this time around, I finally found a boy who is also my Friend, who likes my friends. Who has said, time & time again, that he understands how important my friends are, that the one thing he does not want to happen, under any circumstance, is for our relationship to get in the way of my friendships. And I don't either. The other night, he and I went out & Beauty met up; he was ready to go home, so he sweetly said,

Alright, I'm going to give you guys some girl time.

And he left us the patio, happy as could be.

As much as this little blog is can read at times like a love letter to dating, it is -in fact- a Love Letter to My Friends.

To my Mother, to my Little Sisters, to Goldi, to Bijou; to my girlfriends across the street, my girlfriends in San Francisco. To my girlfriends who invited me to Thanksgiving, who helped me when I was bed bound with a sprained ankle. To my Shopgirls from the past; the ones who were my rocks when I broke up with my Ex in the first place.
Because they are what make me who I am; not Apt F or the Dutchman or the Aussie.
Those boys are the real sidenotes in my Saturn Return.

Because most of this growth has occurred on patios this past year; by being inspired by the women around me. And I have watched each and every one of my friends this past year grow and change; we're all taking those huge steps, & we're taking them together. From job changes, to dating doctors, to ridding our lives of the Beasts, to making friends in the Big City; I have watched each and every one of my friends succeed in so many ways; I have watched my friends flourish. I have felt myself flourish.

And because, now, I have this very love letter to write - because now I have the platform & the courage to write it, and, most importantly, the people to write it about. I have all of these things, because I am a whole enough person in my own right - as just Me - not as So&So'sGirlfriend. Now, I may be ready to attempt something Real for the first time in a long time. And yes, I'm scared - terrified even; because part of me associates real relationships with the loss of friends, and I refuse to be that girl again. I refuse to date someone who would treat my friends as though they are competition with him or any less important than his own friends.

And I found a Friend in Apt F who values my collection of friends as much as I do.

I am a very different person today than I was one year ago today.
And for that, I am thankful.

Happy 'Anniversery' Goldilocks.