Missing Person

My ten year reunion is coming up and it's forced me to realize that the one person I would want to fly down to California to see, to sit around in an awkward rented room getting drunk and talking about the last ten years with, isn't going to be there. And maybe one of the reasons that I'd want to see him so bad is because he's the person I haven't seen or heard from in years. Maybe it's because he's the person who didn't get to graduate college and enter into these first few years of attempts at adulthood that the rest of us have. 

Maybe the reason I'm so interested in hearing about the man he became is because he never got to become him.

He would've been the life of the party. He would've made the flight worth every penny.

Because I don't want to hear about the new jobs and the marriages and the babies. I don't want to watch a whole bunch of almost-thirty year-olds attempt to impress each other with how much they can "party." I want to laugh at the fact that whether we want to admit it or not, we all ended up adults. I want to sit off in a corner and judge the people who made high school suck, to indulge my resilient angst with someone just as witty and sarcastic as I am. 

I miss you Julien. I miss who you were, but even more than that. I miss who you would've become.

My Love Affair With Awkwardness

I've always thought that I was more prone to awkwardness than other people. That I just sort of attracted it to me, or let's be honest, unwittingly initiated it. Looking at it now though, I think it's more that I just don't actively avoid it like most people do. Situations that I know are bound to be a bit uncomfortable for me and/or everyone around me are more interesting. I'm less sure of how I'll react, the outcome's harder to predict, there's just so many more variables involved. And the biggest thing- it's likely to be a situation I've either never been in before or one I've at least never thought out with my usual variety of "what-if"s and corresponding "and-then"s. 

But my real love of Awkward is that it has rarely if ever really let me down. It's made for some of the best stories I'll ever have to tell, and has made so many friendships, relationships and experiences more meaningful and more memorable for it's presence. Awkwardness is what gave me my sarcasm and my openness, my comfort in our companionship has let me be the person that said the things that I might have held back and do so many things I might never have ever done without it.

When it comes down to it, making friends with Awkward has been about accepting the parts of me I'm never 100% sure other people will accept. And they're kind of some of the best parts of me.