Blessed

After a couple of weeks of feeling seriously under the weather, I'm back to feeling mostly human.  It's such a relief.  Mind you, just because the most-evil-sinus-infection-ever is receding doesn't mean I'm not feeling a bit seedy today, but at least I can say it's all my own fault.  It just turns out I'm getting old.  I can no longer stay up until 3:00 in the morning and expect to function properly the following day.

Yesterday was my high school's annual reunion weekend.  I go back for at least some of the events every year, and this year was no exception.  Upon hearing that I regularly go back for high school reunions, most people assume either that I'm trying to hang on to the glory days of my youth in a pathetic sort of way, or else that I'm moderately insane.  After all, who wants to relive high school - zits, hormones, crushes, social awkwardness and all?

It turns out I just happen to be particularly blessed by all the friends I have in my life.  It's difficult to describe the friendships I have maintained since high school without sounding nauseatingly cliché.  My best girl friend in the whole world is one I met in high school, and she's become a part of my very being after knowing each other for nearly 20 years.  Marriages, moves, and major life events have passed, and we're as close as ever.

I have a couple of other friends from high school that I now pretty much see only once a year on reunion weekend.  Yet despite the years and changes we've undergone, when we get together it's always just as easy, just as fulfilling to be in each other's company again.  In fact, in many ways, it gets better with time.  While people scoff at social media and social networking sites like Facebook, I have to confess I'm a big fan.  It allows us all to stay caught up on the essentials of what the others have been up to, so when we get together there's less need to catch up, and it's easy to just enjoy each other's company.

One of the people I had the pleasure of spending time with last night I have been friends with since I was 6 years old.  How many people are lucky enough to still positively adore someone they positively adored in kindergarten?

Every so often when we all get together, we look at each other and marvel that we're all still in touch, and that we all still actually like our friends from high school.  Most people I talk with don't seem to have similar luck.

It's not just high school that has given me such wonderful friends.  I have collected a handful of beloved souls from many different parts of my life - college, my junior year abroad, and people I've met since then.  In fact, part of the reason I'm so dang tired is because, after getting to sleep at 3:00 a.m., my husband and I dragged our sorry selves out of bed at a reasonable hour to go watch a relatively newly-acquired dear friend play baseball in a local league.  Dark circles be damned - I wouldn't have missed it for anything.

So, today I'm feeling particularly blessed by the friendships that make my life so much richer, and thankful that I am aware of how important my friends are to me.  It's funny, for someone who considers herself rather misanthropic, I seem to have collected a remarkable number of loved ones.