Wheaton

Beloved, we are always in the wrong

Handling so clumsily our stupid lives

Suffering too little or too long

Too careful even in our selfish loves

--"In Sickness and in Health" by W.H. Auden

So what have I been doing for the last nine months, eh? Reading, of course, and writing essays and serving burgers in Saga and pouring coffee at Sam's and drinking afternoon tea with my friends at 4:00 every day and getting 8 hours of sleep every night because this may be college but I believe in being both coherent and caffeine-free.

Is it a good life? Yes, it is a good life. The bulletin board  in my room is covered with drawing from my younger siblings, and the same beat-up speakers I had at home are sitting on my desk with even more dents than before. 

Or rather, they used to be sitting on desk. It's the last day of finals, though, so my desk is cleared now, and the bulletin board is down and my closet holds nothing but 30 empty hangers. It's pretty depressing, actually, which is why I've spent most of today avoiding my room and sitting in other people's rooms, using their computers to write my blog post.

I'm pretty much a pigheaded idiot, which means it's pretty hard to teach me anything at all, but if I've learned anything at all this year, it's that friendships are really really important and also super complicated. My New Years Resolution was to memorize poetry, and I actually didn't do a half-bad job at it. One of the ones I memorized was a portion from Auden's "In Sickness and in Health" and I think it pretty well sums up how I felt about friendships for much of this year: incapable and inexperienced.

Floundering, desperately trying to figure out how to do everything right and how to not be selfish and still get good grades at the same time. Honestly, I don't know that I did a very good job, but maybe that's one of the best things about good friends--they give you room to make mistakes and don't ditch you simply because you are insensitive and irritating. And I, despite all the odds against me, managed to make some pretty good friends this year. 

You know, they always talk about how in marriage, love is a choice, right? But this year, I think I've learned that friendship is a choice as well. In the past, I've viewed friendship pretty selfishly, like "these are the people who make me laugh" and presto, friends. And I mean, I guess that's how friendships often start for me, but in order to move beyond that, you make a choice. You say, "Okay, these are my people. And I'm going to care about them and let them care about me."  

And maybe sometimes you don't do a very good job or they don't do a very good job, but that's alright because you made a choice. And that means that you've decided to keep caring about them no matter what.

So yes, beloved, we are always in the wrong, but through my failed attempts at being a good friend "comes a voice which utters an absurd command--Rejoice!"

Rejoice. And so I do.