First, I apologize for the lack of blogging (I know you've all been waiting with baited breath for my next entry....or at least let me think that....). I've been...
busy....
This is a blog entry I've been ruminating about for the past year or so (before I even started this thing) and something that is always on my mind. This is part one, because as I put it down on paper, or screen, whatever, I'm sure I'll have more to say on the subject. With my best friend getting married this weekend, the issue of what makes a friend is clearly on my mind. Though, I have to say, she is more of a sister to me than I'll ever have, and probably the closest friend I will ever make in this crazy business we call show (no, offense, but we all know staying long term friends with other actresses ain't easy). But, I don't want to ruin my wedding speech here. But "Big Sister", I may have to post it here one day.
Coming from a small family, that sadly and suddenly got smaller last year, most of my closest friends do tend to become closer than my own family members. Sort of a choose your own family. I've never been one to have a group of girlfriends, and I'm much better and much more myself one on one. Mr. R is not only my husband but, as cliche as it may be, my best friend in the world as well. (sorry for the sappiness).
As this blog is about my past, present, and future, I've been spending time taking a walk down friendship memory lane. And with Facebook, facetime, skyping, and texting it makes it pretty easy to do so. I have, at the moment 709 Facebook "friends" -- no bragging, just wondering how many I actually speak to off of the interweb. Again, no offense. I dearly love you all.
And thank you for being a friend.
On Facebook, you find yourself being tagged in photos from Halloween's past by people you haven't spoken to in person since the time the picture was taken:
clearly my acting skills were not what they could have been back then - Someone go tell my fifth grade self Wednesday Addams would NEVER smile! ok?
You find an old best friend posting a photo that will soon lead you to a skype or facetime session you cannot wait for:
(please no judgments on the fanny pack. I'm sure it was serving some purpose....)
You find yourself playing
words with friends, with the most popular girl from high school, and as you play you share more of a conversation than you ever did back then--not a bad thing! They are easy one click sends and I like them. Facebook and texts also give us the chance to easily reconnect with people from our past on a deeper level, as I've said before, texting takes the worry out of that dreaded voice mail message. There is now an easy window open to make what I call new-old friends. And you don't have to go through this:
That always makes me laugh, but I digress...
I guess what I'm trying to say is you can meet someone for the second time around in person and realize you still have the same things in common but having gone through so much, you are finally able to share a deep friendship, that for some reason or another you couldn't before. You find yourself building a family of friends. When I was at summer camp, as I mentioned at the
end of my last post, I found a family of people who shared my interests. Theater lovers who didn't quite fit in at home in their own lives and schools but fit in there. (if you didn't know the words in the original tempo to "Getting Married Today" from
Company, your popularity stock dropped just a bit). Yes musical theater friends, enjoy the following (though my nerdiest, I mean most popular, of friends will have seen it).
Most of my closest friends come from four places: early childhood, summer (theater) camp, NYU, and professional show business. Of course they all overlap. Especially when you took part in a show called
"College The Musical" ten years after College The real thing.
The types of friends vary from the ones you speak to everyday, the ones you speak to once a year as if no time as gone by, the ones who unfortunately only call you when they need something, and the ones you know you can call when you need something. There's also the elusive type of friend that call you when they know you need something. Those are special. There are fast friendships and slow friendships. If you're rehearsing 8 hours a day 6 days a week with people, you're gonna become fast friends, but when the show closes, you have to work to make it last. A friend, most importantly for me, is someone you can be your truest self with, the crazy, the wonderful, the bad, the tears, the laughter...all of it. We spend so much time fitting into molds, why should we ever need to do that with a friend?
As I think about my past self from girl scouts to marriage I think how much I've changed, how much certain friends have changed and how much our friendships have NOT changed. I have a friend I've know since summer camp who went to NYU with me. An inspiring, wonderful friend, who has seen me through rough times, put up with me when I decided I wanted to be "popular"(what a terrible word!) and ignored him for a bit, and gave me the honor of putting up with him through his journey to sobriety. He is truly an inspiration. What I find so amazing about this friend, let's call him SS Man, as he is now a 'sober
sommelier', is that we still speak the way we spoke all those years ago. Same with "Big Sister". As much as we've been through (breakups, marriages, deaths) and as much as we've changed, our friendships remain the same. My college roomate, for example, I can call her anytime and she's there. Hands down. That's what friendship is, to me. Life keeps changing and like any relationship, a friendship, a marriage, a sibling, a parent, you have to change with it, work on it and find that balance to stay the same friends you were years ago.
I also think about re-connections or late connections or old connections. I look at my second grade class picture below (most of the people in it I am currently Facebook friends with, which blows my mind). I see a blond boy two rows behind me, who not only did I spend every year in school with him first through fifth grade but reconnected with him at summer camp to perform in two shows together, we are still very much in touch. It is also amazing to reconnect with your best girl friend from elementary school (the one in the kick ass saddle shoes and leggings -- rock it!)
ten years after you lost touch (why? because she moved ONE TOWN OVER) just in time to take part in each other's weddings (unfortunately we were not marrying twin versions of
Neil Patrick Harris, as we had planned, but I do think we did pretty well.) Or, when you find your new best friend being a fifty years young genius director from summer camp (who let's face it, used to scare the bejezzus out of you when you didn't know your lines), you think, this is truly amazing...sixteen years ago I never would have imagined sharing so much. Or late connections, late to the party friendships: The ones right in front of your nose, that you only wish you had become friends with sooner.... But maybe you find a friend you were never friends with at summer camp, who happens to be the daughter of one of your mother's oldest friends. Leading to a re-connection of two generations (well three given that she just had a baby!) How things work sometimes astound me. But you have to look out for things. Or else you have a long list of missed connections. But, as they say, it's never too late.
Past (and some still present and will be future)
Present (and some past and will be future)
This in no way includes everyone (and we lost our SS man to the slot machines, but I do indeed like this photo, because I have no idea who our new friend in the white shorts is.....)
Future:
More on all of this later. Tell me your thoughts!
To all my friends out there, down the road and back again,
Em
