I miss you too. I have been working out a lot and as I sit on the recumbent bike and decide to do 15 extra minutes I think of you at the Y being like “Come on, why aren’t you done yet.” And every time I make a muscle I smile and think of you being like “You better stop lifting those weights. You better not have big muscley arms for my wedding.” Ahhhh, we were so young.
I think that one of the things I missed the most during my marriage was not having girl time with friends. It’s almost like that part of you ceases to exist. Sure you grab lunch, or a drink, or do couple things, but it isn’t the same as sitting on the couch and drinking wine while you pass a journal back and forth to each other while you write things back and forth. It’s not the same as sharing terribly deep and bad poetry with each other, because we both were so terribly deep and cool, and we thought whatever dumb “huge” issue that was weighing on us was going to pull us under. I miss grabbing beers in sweat pants after working out at the gym and being amazed at all of the boys that would flirt with us when we looked like crap, because just the weekend before I took 4 hours to get ready to go out and no one really bothered with me. I miss screaming because the hottest guy at the office kissed me at the after party and part of the joy was knowing that that skinny bitch we didn’t like, well we knew she was going to be pissed – being able to share that is so pure and amazing. I miss listening to you recount exactly what the other hot boy at the office said to you, because you had that unspoken thing going on, and we would painstakingly try to decipher what he meant and if he was purposely trying to be flirty or not. I miss you getting pissed at me for something stupid I didn’t even realize that I did, and not speaking to me for a long time, because you truly are one of the best grudge holders I know. You are also one of the best “Oh it’s been 6 months let’s just pretend that this didn’t happen” kind of people as well. I miss just doing nothing but being silly and sharing secrets.
You get married and you become a “unit” - you aren’t as open as you were when you were just girlfriends because part of you asks yourself where your loyalty lies and if what you really want and need to share is crossing that “couple” line. The “I can’t share that because he would be really pissed.” thing is out there like a great big pink elephant in the room. Well you know what, I want to know because that loyalty you have, it should be to yourself sometimes. Girls talk about everything, and I mean everything, and I miss that. I don't think men understand that, sometimes I would love to just look at one of the husbands and say "Yup, I know just how big it is." Or "Oral sex is for men AND women. I'm sorry you have "germ" issues, but if you ever want another blow job, you need to get over them." There are few people in this world that you will ever share a true girlfriend bond with and know that you can say anything and the other person will never mention it again unless you bring it back up. There are very few people whom you allow to ever know just how truly fucked up of a person that you are, because honestly everyone is truly a fucked up person, but that isn’t something you normally share, because, well, then people would say things like “Wow, she is so fucked up?” and they judge you. A girlfriend knows, and still loves you, and actually respects your fucked up aspects because that makes you who you are and it makes you even cooler. A girlfriend knows fucked up shit that even your husband doesn’t know.
Why do we have to grow up, pair off and lose all of that? I sometimes feel as if that part of me almost died, as if it was on life support for a very long time, but it’s slowly making a recovery. We deserve to be happy and carefree and silly sometimes. We deserve to remember who we were, and be that again. We deserve to want to have that, and we deserve to reclaim it. We deserve the right to be girlfriends again. Because when we do reclaim it, we teach our daughters how to own themselves, and be true to themselves, how to love themselves and how to love a girlfriend.
We forgot what Gibran said about marriage “And stand together yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.” Most of us forget that we still need to stand apart, and when we remember, sometimes it’s too late.
