Gather Together The Ones You Love

I have a very dear friend, a friend I have had for over 15 years, who absolutely, hands down wins the award for the most exaggerated inability to keep in touch.  Let me start at the beginning and explain.

Sabrina and I went to Allegheny together.  I'm sure that I must have met her during one of our pre-study abroad gatherings, but I don't remember her from any of those meetings.  My first memory of her was at a youth Hostel in Frankfurt (oh boy, I think it was in Frankfurt.  My memory is terrible!)  It was the meeting point for the three colleges who took part in the Cologne study abroad program.  My very first memory is of this girl, with a huge personality and a smile to match, telling a very distraught story about a man who flashed her on the way to the hostel!  I was immediately drawn in by her charm and intensity.  We became immediate friends.  We traveled all around Europe together with a wonderful group of kids.  Two of my other long time friends, Shelly and Shannon were in that group.  We made fun of each other.  We egged one another on, and we protected one another when need be.  We had a blast.  We called ourselves the Golden Girls.  Shelly was Blanche, aptly characterized for her southern drawl and enchantment with men.  Shannon was Sophia, brutally honest and bitingly sarcastic, always willing to slam down a snide insult, mostly at Shelly's expense!  Sabrina was Dorothy, calculated and cerebral, the guardian of us all.  She tried to keep us from making bad decisions, and when we didn't listen, she was frequently the one who bailed us out.  I was Rose.  Think what you want, I love Rose!  And perhaps there is a little truth in me being an animal loving, flighty blond who tells too many stories with a point that is apparent only to myself!  Haha! I made some of my longest lasting and most intense friendships during that semester abroad, but Sabrina was the one who truly grabbed my heartstrings.  We had so much in common.  We shared stories about our crazy biological fathers, disagreements with our mothers, our struggles with food and body image.  Instead of just trying to empathize while listening to each other talk, we actually understood each other completely.  We were best friends, if you would.

When we came back from Germany, Sabrina and I decided to share a dorm room.  That, as it turned out, wasn't such a great idea.  We were as close as sisters.  So close that we fought like sisters.  I wanted to be wild and free, and she felt the need to keep me safe.  I didn't want to be kept safe, I wanted to play.  She mothered me.  I yelled at her and she yelled back.  But even through those fights, we still loved one another.

One time during our time in the dorm together, I got food poisoning.  It was awful, awful, awful.  There was only one other time in my adult life that I was that sick and it was years after the food poisoning incident.  I had gone to my cousins baptism and eaten something bad.  My whole family was ill.  My bed was a loft, and Sabrina slept in the bed under me.  I woke up sick in the middle of the night and somehow made it to the shared hall bathroom.  I had simultaneous vomiting and diarrhea.  I was in a semi-public bathroom and didn't know enough in advance to carry a bucket or small trash can with me, so I had to drag a huge utility trash can into the stall with me.  I got the can into the stall, but I couldn't close the door.  I still thank God that no one walked in on me that night.  It was disgusting!  I had lost so much fluid that I couldn't stand up without feeling faint.  I literally crawled back to the dorm room, slithered over to her bed and shook her awake.  She made me a bed on the floor, followed me to the bathroom for subsequent sick trips, went to the health center the next day and brought me jello, broth and crackers.  It was like having a mother there to care for me.  It takes someone special to nurse you through a violent stomach illness - someone who cares enough to deal with your absolute worst and also someone with whom you are comfortable enough to allow to see you in such a state.

That stomach bug, in reality, wasn't the worst of what she saw in me.  Sabrina and I survived some very turbulent times together while we were at Allegheny.  We were both at the peaks of our own mental torment, struggling with some very ugly inner demons.  Many of my friends supported me during that time.  Many of my friends went above and beyond any normal friendship just to save me from myself, but no one understood me like Sabrina.  No one.  It was always as if she could feel when I needed her.  I was never blessed with a strong sense of intuition, but Sab was.  I would often I find myself eerily in contact with her not because I sought her out, but because she somehow sensed my distress.  It happened all through college, and for a little while after college too.  Before I had Jacob, I had a miscarriage.  It was a terrible experience and for several months, I mourned the loss of that baby.  The miscarriage happened during a period when I was not in touch with Sabrina regularly. In fact, we probably hadn't talked for a year or more.  She had no way of knowing what was going on in my life.  I can still clearly picture the day she called me, about a week after the miscarriage.  I can see myself standing in my kitchen, holding my phone and I can hear her say, "Koelle, are you OK?  I think you might be pregnant." Explain that.  I can't.  But I can tell you that it was good to hear her voice just then.    I needed her and she found me.  If I believed in reincarnation, I would say that we have been linked in many, many past lives.  I would say we were sisters, maybe even twins, mother and daughter, grandmother and granddaughter.  And if our souls resurface in a future life, we will find each other again and again, I'm sure.

Sabrina left Allegheny before we graduated.  She kept in touch a little bit here and there and then would disappear.  I would get irritated trying to maintain a one sided relationship and I would refuse to call her.  But eventually, time would erase my anger, the need to see her would get the best of me and I'd call.  We'd talk for a while off and on.  We might even see each other, but after a while the same cycle would repeat.  She'd fall off the face of the earth and I would get mad that she ditched me yet again.  About 5 years ago this happened.  She stopped calling and I decided that I was done letting myself worry about her, worry about our friendship and putting so much energy into something that I felt she didn't reciprocate.  But things would remind me of her.  When we got together with the Allegheny crew, we always talked about her.  She was never far from my mind, and after Andrew was born, I decided that I wasn't going to hold a grudge any more.  So I called, and we talked.  She swore she would call me.  I waited and waited, and two years later I still had not heard from her.  I was hurt, and I stopped trying again...until this summer, when my heart got the best of me and I decided yet again to try to reconnect.  I know, if you are reading this and you've never had a friendship so strong, you are probably thinking that I am just a walking doormat.  Why on earth would I open myself up to being abandon so many times?  If she really cared, then she wouldn't let three years lapse between phone calls, right?  Well, not exactly.  While I may not know what's going on in her life, I know her mind like I know my own.  I know that even with lack of contact she is still thinking of me, and I know that if she isn't contacting me, there is probably something that she's trying to protect me from - something she's going through that she doesn't want me to feel or worry about.  Never for a moment did I think that her disappearances were because she didn't care.  In fact, I know that they happen because she cares too much.  No matter how many years lapse between contacts, no matter how mad I am at her for dumping me once again, when I hear her voice, all of that negativity is immediately erased.  I am instantly transported back 15 years.  I feel like she is in the room beside me, and I am simply elated.  Always.

She called me while I was in Florida, but I missed her call.  I was so excited to hear from her, that I actually couldn't return the call immediately.  I had to sit and talk to Sharon for a little while first and get my bearings.  When I called her back, I got voicemail.  When she called me again, she got voicemail.  I sent a text message and said I would call her Monday after the boys went to bed, and she agreed.  But then on Monday night, she sent me a text and said that she hadn't slept and was too tired to talk.  I sent her a reply to the tune of "we haven't talked in 3 years so what's another day?" I would be lying to say that I wasn't absolutely disappointed, but I do understand insomnia, and really, the truth is, after 3 years (almost 4), what is another day?  Then, as I was getting ready for bed, the phone rang.  It was Sabrina!  I don't think I even said hello.  We just started talking immediately.  Just as always, time was erased.  We were reconnected.  She said she was nervous about calling after so much time had lapsed, and I think I said something like, "20 years could go by between contacts and you could still call me.  I'd yell at you for neglect first, call you a bitch and then tell you how much I love and miss you!  I will always welcome you back into my life."  And that's the God's honest truth.  I don't necessarily like some of the details of my past.  I'm not proud of many of the things I said and did.  But at this point in my life, I have enough distance to recognize the lessons that I have learned along the way.  I understand now that I needed those experiences in order to make me who I am.  The relationships that were formed during those years are special, unique and custom fit to me.  These are the people I need in my life, the friends I know will be by my side until the end of our time on earth.

It's not just Sabrina who I am grateful for.  I have been blessed, and I really mean blessed, with the friendship of some very special women - my college friends, Shelly, Shannon, Danielle, Kathleen, Molly, and Michelle- we have seen each other at our best and worst, have so many ridiculous, college-aged stories to use as blackmail against one another that are countered by some truly heartwarming tales as well.  The women I met while I worked in Pittsburgh - Donna, Norma and Marsha - are three whom I hold near and dear too.   I am the youngest of that crew.  I think there were times when they, especially Marsha, felt protective of me.  She has 3 boys, and we sometimes joked that I was her surrogate daughter.  But even with 15 years between us, the NTAC women always treated me as an equal.  We too were instant friends and have only grown closer over the last 12 years.  I am often filled with a longing to gather all of these women close to me.  I love that I have these friendships, but I am sometimes so sad that we don't live in the same town.  I see other people who have their life-long friends all together and I am filled with envy.  I watched the group of retired women and men dancing together at the resort in Florida and I was at times overcome with desire to gather together the ones I love.  I love the life I have right now.  I am married to the most wonderful man alive.  I have two beautiful boys, and my parents just blocks away.  I have great friends here in Hollidaysburg.  I couldn't ask for more, but still, I can't help but miss my girl friends.  I think about them every day.   So girls, I know you are all reading this - when can we get together again?  I miss you all, and I love you all very, very much.