Last week, some of my very best college friends and I celebrated our five year anniversary of friendship. I woke up on August 18 with a Facebook memory nagging my notifications, and there we were: moving into college for the very first day. Our celebration consisted of a text in our five year old group message, and then I went about my day.
The story of meeting these girls lives at the front of my brain during this time of year: the month of dorm pictures and SEC sorority recruitment and the smell of school supplies at Target. I got to visit my brother’s girlfriend’s dorm yesterday, and as I stood in the same building I once lived in four years ago, I realized watching others live the life you once lived will never not be sad. (Depressing sentiment, I know.)
But unfortunately, that is the hard truth Ouachita never told us: that one day we would have to leave, and our friends wouldn’t necessarily leave with us.
The other day, I was at a baseball game with my family, chatting with family friends. A conversation came up about a friend group gathering because one girl was moving out of state. I was so confused why I didn’t know this little piece of Ouachita intel, as in the world of social media, almost nothing can go unnoticed.
But then I realized, as I scrolled through Instagram pages I didn’t recognize, that I had muted this entire friend group months ago. Every last one of them. Not out of spite, not out of dislike. Rather, out of jealousy due to the fact they hadn’t scattered after graduation. It seemed as though they were sharing everyday life together still, while I was left missing my people. (Again, pathetic, I know. To mute an ENTIRE friend group is an all-time low. Last summer though, I just couldn’t handle it.)
My friends and I have at least been able to gather over the last year and a half quite a few times, as many of us have been getting engaged and married. Praise Jesus for the tradition of engagement and bachelorette parties, because without them, I may have gone insane. Two weekends ago, I asked one member of our group, Grayson, what we’ll do to see each other once we’ve all married each other off.
“Baby showers.”
That night we got cosmos at her and her husband’s hotel, discussing the absurdity of random baby names and those pregnant around us. *insert panic
But in honor of Ouachita’s freshman move-in day, I wanted to tell the story of my college best friends and why we owe Ouachita’s admissions team all the praise for a lifetime of friendship (because how did they know one little corner of rooms would turn into this?).
I’ve said it a few times, but not as much on the blog: August 18, 2016 was the second worst day of my life. The first being the day my mom left me for good in Little Rock last summer. However, freshman move-in day was very, very close trauma-wise. It was rainy, it was early, and it was just simply terrible emotionally.
Of course, it was fun (and really surreal) to drive up to the freshmen girls’ dorm. My roommate worked on the football team and moved in early, so I had already spent a few nights there cleaning while she was at practice. (I also spent one night trading mattresses with the room across the hall, because they had the allergy cover, and mine did not.) That familiarity with the dorm and with my roommate helped that morning, especially when we were welcomed with a handwritten sign from her that read “Welcome home, Addy!”
I had mentally designed my side of our space for months before that day, and so the process of putting everything away was fairly easy. The only things we struggled with were hanging pictures on the sweaty cinder block walls and figuring out how to put sheets on a bed six feet off the ground. The hardest part of the day wasn’t until the afternoon, when we gathered in the performing arts center for the “New Beginnings” ceremony, a tradition my dad would tear up at just the thought of. (But also a tradition I would spend the next three years sneaking into, standing in the back and crying over the sentiment of each new class. Again, pathetic.)
While I sat through a welcome from the president, an introduction from the student body president, prayers by the admissions team, and so on and so on, I felt myself get more and more sick. It was this existential dread, a dread I’d had for seventeen years. My parents were about to leave me.
We didn’t do it on the lawn of Cone-Bottoms, surrounded by all my new classmates. Instead, we found a spot behind some cars in the parking lot. I just remember my dad holding me while I sobbed. Absolutely sobbed. The back heaving, head aching sob. And then I walked alone back to my dorm as my parents drove approximately 1.5 minutes away. In that moment, I will say I was mortified of someone seeing me, seeing my puff of a face and asking where I was from, because surely it had to be out of the country with this amount of crying going on. I proceeded to lock myself in the bathroom and cry some more, thinking about the students whose parents were actually driving hours away.
I don’t remember much else of that day until the night fell. I felt so odd. I wanted to go home, but my Sunday school teacher had told me to try to make it four weeks without doing so (in an attempt to avoid the seemingly inevitable habit. I made it about one and a half, if I recall correctly.) I found myself sitting in a circle with my entire suite, wondering what to do next.
And I don’t know whose idea it was. But we were all in agreement that we should go across the hall and knock on those girls’ room. We had caught glances of it throughout the day, and we wanted to see if it was as cute as we thought it had looked.
We knocked. And then all of a sudden, we were all perched around their dorm (and I must add it was very cute, as it should have been with their matching Anthropologie bedspreads) until midnight. I texted Mom and Dad that night: “I’m across the hall with some really nice girls. I’m okay. I love you!” (And yes, I absolutely have tears in my eyes as I write this.)
There I was, the girl who never enjoyed sleepovers or birthday parties or socializing with many people outside of my mother, knocking on a door the first night of college that would reveal my future bridesmaids. How truly wild is God.
And what’s beautiful is that every best friendship I gained over the following four years in college really spurred from that initial group. Either through mutual friends, or “you would really like her!” (turned into three years of rooming with Kyla Soden), or “you should join OSF!” (which led me to my final hour soulmate, Selby Tucker)...I never was scared of being without a friend again, and really, never will.
We pledged EEE together, cheating the system and texting the entire morning awaiting our bids, but also standing beside each other when EEE wasn’t all some had dreamed of. We traveled the country (and some, the world) together. We roasted ex-boyfriends together, ignoring the fact that we were the ones to set each other up with those very boyfriends in the first place. We celebrated every single birthday together, so often stuffed around the circle booth at BJ’s as we all took turns singing our praises to the birthday girl. We created our very own sorority, the Dallas Gamma Zetas, and treated every trip and event like a chapter outing. Friendsgiving, friendsmas, girl’s Valentine’s night with heart-shaped pizza from Domino’s, and movie nights spent watching Love, Rosie over and over as brownies brewed in the crockpot (my specialty, cooked to the consistency of warm goo). When I ran my first half-marathon, those girls were there at the finish line. I dropped my English major with Grayson after fighting a grueling semester of advanced grammar, I learned how to do the yearbook with Brooke, I spent hours crying with Megan senior year. When we needed dinner as underclassmen, the table by the windows on the bottom level of the Caf was our five-star restaurant. And when we graduated, we ate brunch in that very spot that morning.
We call ourselves the “Congress,” coined in sophomore year because Keleigh and I thought it was so funny to think of the United States Congress having a group chat. And I imagine I’ll be referencing Congress on my deathbed for this very reason, mistaken for an overly-political and senile old woman.
But anyways. I’m thankful I can use writing about memories as an escape back into them, as I wait to make some more. Here’s to counting down the days till Mariel’s bachelorette trip, right on time.
Xo. A
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