Oh, college. It’s a tough world to live in. You are simultaneously trying to find yourself and create a stable life for your post-grad self. Friday you’re dancing the night away with friends, Saturday you’re wasting your life away in the library. It’s a weird place. You sometimes wear pajamas to class, and the guy next to you has never come to class sober.
College can be overwhelming and confusing. Relationships, family, school and sleep are on a constant cycle of attention, and there seems to be no way to balance it all. But the one thing that can make it all better are those special somebodies, your best friends, who know you the best. Maybe they haven’t been there since day one, but they’re here now, and that is a beautiful thing.
My best friends happen to be my roommates, and they are a special breed because they put up with A LOT. First of all, I am a very emotional person, and a common question they have for me is: “Are you going to cry?” The answer is usually no, and then I break into tears. But they just laugh and tell me it’s OK.
They know how to balance making fun of me with making me feel loved. Without them, my college experience would be void of laughter and smiles. They know how to make me laugh when I need to, or just get my mind off what is bothering me. We discuss how our days went over spaghetti like a married couple and binge-watch “Shameless” like it’s our job. We pile into one of our beds and take ridiculous pictures and laugh until our sides hurt. We act like silly little kids, yet we don’t care how dumb we look.
We make weird noises to communicate, and we laugh over the silliest things. We are so in sync that we never argue over what to have for dinner (9 times out of 10 it’s Chinese), and a common phrase around our apartment is: “I was just thinking that.” It’s a little freaky how close we are, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
So thank you to those goons that I love so much. You have seen me at 3 a.m. crying into Ramen over yet another boy (*yawn*). You have seen me snap over silly things and then apologize five seconds later. You have listened to me rant over the same problem for the millionth time. You have seen me at my absolute worst, yet you stick around through it all.
College friends are the best friends because they see you at an unstable time in your life, yet they want nothing more than to experience that journey with you. Never take these special people for granted.
