Growing Pains.

When I was a child - as my mother tells it - I would, usually at dinnertime around our family dining room table, stand up on my chair, raise up my arms, and demand the attention of my parents,

Look! Look how Big I've gotten!!!

As if, over the course of our spaghetti entree, I had grown from a two foot tall child to a five foot tall adult.
As if to announce,

Look! I am growing up right in front of you! As we speak! As we eat!

Around the same time, 

I also used to cry, real tears, sobbing, at four years old that, 

'I don't want to go to college.' 

And, as children do, I have grown up. 

Trés Grow'd Up.

Look, look how big I've gotten. 

However, in this Growth Chart that is Life, in growing and changing, and regressing and growing some more,   with all of that, comes Change. Capital C. (No shirt, Shitlock.)

But what happens when you outgrow things you love? 

When an old t-shirt, that used to encapsulate your 'You-ness' so perfectly, now just seems illfitting, outdated and threadbare? 

When a friend who used to be the Second Pea in your Pod no longer fits alongside you so comfortably? 

When a 'Signature Scent' becomes an unpleasant olfactory reminder of a really bad year.*

*Michael Kors. 2003.

What do you do when you outgrow a best friend? 

When what used to be so comfortable is now not. 

When silence is now awkward and no longer filled with camaraderie.

Or worse, when silence is really just a filler for festering? 

I certainly don't have any answers, no matter how big I get. 

You want the what section?!?
It's like I don't even know you anymore.

But, I do believe that - like in relationships - we deserve standards and paper planes and friends that treat us well, with patience, and with love. And I have failed on this count many times, and am right now, as everyone has. As we grow, and as we change, and as we sometimes no longer see eye to eye with our best of friends, and as I realize that no one is perfect, especially not me, and as I get more and more at ease with my own imperfections, I realize that sometimes the outcome of Growth is that sometimes you grow out of your friends. 

That best friend you've had since Kindergarten, her actions no longer are forgivable, or easily disregarded, because you're 'just kids'.
I mean, sometimes you just realize that in all this growing up & getting big, you don't really like who your friends have grown up to be.  

Or that the best friend who got you through your darkest time cannot seem to see past your darkest time. Or when you simply realize you don't like to be around a friend anymore. Or when you start to realize that your friend feels the exact same way about you. That she doesn't particularly like you very much either.

Relationships change as we change, but how do we remedy a change so uncomfortable? 

How do you remedy the relationship when you also recognize that change = things with never be the same? Without blame, and without causing emotional unrest? 

Without feeling like shit, and beating yourself up about it? 

I don't know. 

It's all well and good to talk the about friends that you can just pick up the phone and not a beat is missed after weeks of busy busy. About friends who just seem to 'Get You', even from 500 miles away. 

I realized last night, that in the last five years, I have seen my Best Friend - in the flesh - four times. Three of them being in 2007 or 2008. We joke to each other that ' [my] Best Friend is really just a floating voice in [my] ear.' And it's true. But when it comes to 'First Best Friend', she's it. We do not skip a beat. We can be floating voices for eachother once a month or multiple times an hour. I cannot live without her.

But outgrowing a 'Second Best Friend' or a Third, or most painfully, your First, is almost worse than a break up. 

I mean, if you think about it, a 'break up' really just means, at the most elementary level:

'I don't want to pretend procreate with you anymore.'

(Or, I don't want to procreate with you in the future.)

Emotionally, that sits a bit more soundly with people (me) no matter how sucky it is to hear, or how painful the break up may be, than when you outgrow friendships, & you realize some combination of:

We have very little in common. 

We don't get each other anymore. 

 

We have nothing in common other than our hair.

You disappointed me. You've changed. I've disappointed you.  

I don't really like you anymore. We don't really like one another.

Or, the worst, 

You (or I) have not been a good friend.

They all suck. 

'I don't want to have sex with you anymore' versus 'I don't really like you anymore'. Both suck, but one's really fucking personal, and is wholly about you as a person, and can't be justified by Darwin, or male stupidity, or anything that feels out of your control. 

'We've outgrown what used to be awesomely super fun' sucks too.

And coming to peace with this outgrowing of certain relationships is really hard.

Especially, when you're unsure of whether or not its actually a reflection of Growth. 

I mean all I know is that I'm trying to be my best self, and even in doing so, I still fail.
A lot.

People change. And grow. Thank god for that, really. 

Makes me really grateful for those friends I can call after weeks and months and years and not a beat has skipped. 

xx : bijou bijou.