Twenty and the friendship

Twenty was a student who I learned from as an adult. She became friends with two other girls in her middle school years and stayed friends with them through their adult lives. They are now in their 30s and have children and careers, but they are still friends.

I don’t know why I find it remarkable. I still know and regularly talk to and, from time to time, visit with friends I’ve known since sixth grade. Somehow what seems unremarkable in me seems remarkable in them. I’ve watched them go from gangly, silly, giggly young girls to confident, self aware, high-achieving women while still maintaining the spark of what made them so fun to watch in middle school. They were those kids that didn’t shy away from anything. They charged in, full bore, when someone was unfair, or one of the boys was being sexist, or one of the adults wasn’t listening. They weren’t disrespectful, just passionate. I loved that about them. I still do.

They’ve chosen unique paths, but they all seem to have come to a point where they are happy with the lives they have created for themselves. I wish more of my former students were, at least from what I can see from the outside, happy with the lives they’ve created for themselves. I’m not sure if it is because they still come to see me and tell me they are happy, or because they follow me on social media so I see their group photos, or if it is simply the nature of this trio that their lives overlap so much that I can see them celebrating life together so often.

What I learned from Twenty is that three women who started out in the same neighborhood, with the same school experience, and the same opportunities can take vastly different routes to adulthood and still maintain the spark that made them friends in the first place. I’ve learned to reconnect to old friends because the adage that old friends are the best friends is, in many ways, true. Your old friends are the ones who knew you before you made money, mistakes, built relationships, created businesses or careers, had children, etc. They knew you before everything that you use to define yourself as an adult. The external world places value on the car you own, the place you live, the job you have, ect. But your old friends knew you before you had a car or knew how to dress in your own style, or had enough to go to the movies without asking mom for some cash. They liked you because you were fun and kept their secrets and put them first. I’ve found that as an adult, it is hard to make friends because you don’t have the unlimited time to spend with a small group of people like you did before you had so many responsibilities. However, Twenty regularly reminds me it is not only possible, it isn’t hard as long as you make those friendships a priority. Thank you Twenty.