The past few days since Kate let me know she was leaving, I've been in a funk. It's not a terrible dark swamp of depression, but there is definitely that urge to just lie in bed and eat candy rather than actually doing anything.
It's not like she's dying, I remind myself. She'll still be around for phone calls and IMs and facebook and Skype. But it's not the same, and I know it, and I still feel a sense of loss.
I never had a proper Best Friend before I met Kate. Throughout school and even after, I always envied those girls with the matching necklaces and the shared giggles and the absolute knowledge of who their Maid of Honor was going to be when they got married. They had someone to call with any problem, someone they could always hang out with, someone to have fights and make up with, and oh baby did I want that.
The thing is, I'm not good at making friends. I'm socially awkward, but not in that cute, sweet way where people want to come up and talk to you because you're just so gosh-darn adorably quiet. My anxiety and nerves turn into a loud, opinionated performance, coupled with a wariness of initiating conversation with strangers and a difficulty making small talk that generally comes off as coldness and disinterest. Even once I know people, I have this lingering fear that any moment, the situation will turn on a dime and they won't like me anymore. There's that point, you know, where you're supposed to get closer to people or you decide to keep them just a casual friend. You've met, you've hung out in groups a few times, and if you're going to become real close friends with them, you have to spend some one-on-one time. Well, I never seem to succeed at making that jump.
Kate made that jump for me. I was 29 when I met her, and had already figured that I was going to die without ever having a Best Friend. That dream had died when the last really close friend married my ex-boyfriend and I wasn't invited to the wedding. But then came Kate, with her fearless approach to conversation and her outrageous outfits and her unsinkable belief that we were about to have The Most Fun. Suddenly I had this person who I could talk to about makeup, and feminism, and instructional technology, and roller derby, and RuPaul's Drag Race, and all the scandalous shit people we knew were up to. We went tubing and went to bars in the middle of the day and discussed how the importance of proper skin care really couldn't be overstated.
And somehow, we started talking about real things. Our relationships, our insecurities, our worries, our anger and our pain and all the other stuff that generally speaking I Just Don't Talk About. She became the person I called when I felt like my life was falling apart, and vice versa.
I know I can still call her, and I will. We'll still talk. We'll still be best friends. It's just that now when I've had a few too many at karaoke night and someone sings "Fire and Rain," I'm going to be crying alone instead of with her. No one else will ever be as excited to go to the Mellow Mushroom. No one else hates all the same people I do.
I'm going to miss her.
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