The Academy

We're coming up on year four of this little tradition of ours, and for the first time, I'm not going to begin by thanking my parents. Instead, I want to take a second to appreciate Mrs. Valentino, wherever she is and despite the fact that she will never see this, for inspiring not just our annual Academy Awards, but also large portions of this entire blog. It's such a glorious little habit to be grateful like clockwork. It's even more glorious still to write, to think, to live, and to say the wrong things and to make mistakes and to reflect on how people have always loved me anyways. 

And yes, to return to our regularly scheduled programming: my parents. My mother and her intractable worry, my father and his intolerable competence. At nineteen, I'm starting to see their humanity-- my father seems more easily tired, my mother less endlessly rational. I'm no longer completely a product of them, both to my infinite sadness and to my great relief, but theirs will always be the hands that sculpted me. I will never be safer than I am in the backseat of my father's car, driving to get bagels on a Saturday morning and discussing the stock market as though either of us have ever made any positive returns. No decision I make is ever real until my mother has approved it. In an indescribable secret language, with endless inside jokes, this is my kitchen cabinet. 

Earlier this year, I was describing to a friend all the ways my sister has shaped me. For twelve years, I said, I did not order a menu item that was not broccoli cheddar soup with a French baguette from Panera Bread. My sister told me it was their best dish, and so it was. He laughed, and told me I describe my life with such vivacity I should really be a writer. What he didn't know is that this technicolor memory only applies to adventures I've shared with her. Running to catch an Uber in the New York rain, with matching Longchamp purses. Ranting about bare minimum effort boys over text. Rushing towards the patio during golden hour mid-July for an impromptu photoshoot. Building a bookshelf in her brand-new apartment. Shoving Chipotle into our mouths and swapping outfits in the backseat of the car before a Taylor Swift concert. We've grown like weeds in a garden -- fast, together, entangled, together, in a rush, together, fighting for resources, together. I wonder what she remembers about growing up with me. I hope it's as cinematic as what I remember of growing up with her. 

But, and I hope this pivot doesn't raise alarm, the romance of being rooted is fading on me. I no longer want to have known people forever. These days, I wonder-- if we don't have that long and complicated history that leads us to continually justify each other's terrible choices, what then? What if I played no part in forming you, and you knew me only once I was ready, chiseled, and hardened? What if there is no significance to the thickness of our history? Then I'd have to know you on purpose. Then loving you would be different than loving me. Then knowing you would be different than knowing me, and both of those ventures would be by choice.

So to everyone I met this year: the girl I befriended while panicking about my buggy malloc code, who has supported my every crash out for the last nine months; the girl I got matching mehndi with at our university-sponsored Diwali party; the boy who told me it was cute that I called my dad every Sunday; the one who knew every word to Love Story at karaoke. To the friend who laughed when I talked about the boy from high school who hurt me. Maybe I should've been offended, but I was strangely comforted. I remember being so sad, but now it's so funny, and well, isn't that what growing up is? To the boys who looked panicked when I mentioned crying every week, who queued Headlines by Drake on aux as soon as I mentioned loving that song. There are people I've known for my whole life that wouldn't do that for me. There are hordes of ex-friends in a graveyard somewhere wondering why I stopped responding to their texts because I've found people to whom my endless monologues and overly trendy tastes are not just quirks to tolerate. To the girl who defends me to the grave, in spreadsheets and board meetings and to anyone who will listen, and to the girls who enveloped me into their friendship as we struggled towards a novice understanding of Turing Machines. To my twin, and my little, and my big. To the ones who named me Rookie of the Year, then proceeded to drink themselves into a coma on our Airbnb couch. I've never before known people who hug with their whole bodies, or smile with their whole faces, like you. To the girl who drives to Pittsburgh from Ann Arbor once a semester with her boyfriend in tow, just to play Secret Hitler in a university lounge room with me and a ragtag group of boys we otherwise never see. There is nobody else I would tolerate this with, especially not in this aggressively accelerating fascist climate, but with you, it's a gift. 

All this to say: I haven't spent a day alone in nine months. There's a special, fizzy kind of magic to friendship that feels like this. Maybe I'm socially awkward and can't be clever on cue, but who am I to complain? I spend all afternoon eating crunchy green grapes on the beach and all night at fancy, expensive Italian restaurants drinking fizzy tonics. My hair smells like chlorine and salt, my lips taste like whipped cream, and I have my bags packed for a new city (almost) every weekend. I have friends who drop everything to help me look for my apartment keys, and beds to crash on in every town I could possibly name. (Which is actually not that many-- my geography is horrible.) The people in my life amaze me. The sheer magnitude of all this meaning I've found stuns me. It's a kind of gratitude that transcends words. If you had told me that this -- this expanse of happiness -- would be in my life a year ago, I would've scoffed. That's a miracle, all by itself.