Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes....and more of staying the same

My friends all suck, but I am still happy, which is good. Somehow I have come to this place in life where no one calls me anymore which sort of makes me feel like I should feel like a loser, but I don't. I guess they are all wrapped up in living....I am too, what with my yoga and video games and very busy nine-to five.

I have this sneaking suspicion I have outgrown them all, not that they are not growing too, they are, just in different directions. That's how life goes. It makes me a little sad to think that these people will not be a part of my life anymore, but excited about new possibilities as well.

But remember when in grade school everybody signed their yearbooks BFF? And how so many of those you swore lifetime commitments to now have faces you would barely remember, much less names? Whoa, just took a walk down memory lane.

I am on a bus, in the back sitting with my girls and we are singing Under the Bridge by Red Hot Chili Peppers. We are convinced we have good voices, but probably we don't which is fine because we are fine. Fine hot junior high girls going to the Mall of America where we won't spend any money cuz we ain't got it, but we will spend precious teenage hours lamenting our miserable lives at home and our latest crushes. Holly and Liz will tell me I need to date Eshon and I will say no, I don't like him. They will tell me I am only 13 and need to stop looking for a husband and lower my standards already. After all, this is only junior high....

We will go home then and write in our journals and then call each other on the phone and share every agonizing word and swear our fealty to each other vehemently. Then my parents will ground me again for the C I got in science class and Holly will later pass me a note in class saying how sorry she is for me and how when we are older we will be so much happier and despite my insistence on misery I am actually happy at that moment because for a little while I had a friend to share it all with and she said and I said and we said we would all be friends forever and we believed in the promises we made and we believed in ourselves.

And somehow, that keeps on happening, but of course, with slightly different themes and tones each year I get older. Some people have the same friends their whole lives and some, like me, get a new bunch every two years or so. Which one of us is luckier? Sometimes I feel bittersweet bur I am always full of hope.