Felicity

I recently got the third season of Felicity on DVD. I have been
watching a lot of Felicity. It was put aside for a bit to watch a few
episodes of Life Goes On, but since I've run out of crackers and wine
to go along with that show's cheese, I am now back to Felicity. At
least until My So Called Life shows up from Netflix tomorrow.

I just finished watching an episode in which Felicity and Noel, who
are extremely close friends, have a huge falling-out because she's
in-love with her boyfriend and Noel, who is not her boyfriend, is
in-love with her. They have a fight - him saying that he needs to take
his post-graduation job in Seattle to get away from her, and that he's
haunted by the idea that he will never get over her.

This got me thinking about my college life and life beyond.  I have
had a (very) few relationships where we simply grew too important to
one another. It's the only explanation for me as to why they end in
weight-loss inducing blazes of glory.

In college, I became dependently close with my best friend at the
time. We lived together with a slew of others our junior year. He and
I hung out all the time, stressing about our futures. We would stay up
till all hours of the night shooting the shit about everything and
anything, while listening to the Indigo Girls (yes, how very college)
sharing our dark and, again, oh-so-collegiate, deep moods. In the
winter, his mother got very sick and died within a few weeks. I west
home with him to Delaware for the funeral. I didn't cry. I remember
feeling this responsibility to keep it together for him. On the drive
home, back to school, it got dark as we got closer to "home". Indigo
Girls were on the stereo, of course, and the song "Virginia Wolf"
started.

"...and the voice at the other end comes like a long lost friend
so I know I'm all right
life will come and life will go
still I feel it's all right
cause I just got a letter to my soul
and when my whole life is on the tip of my tongue
empty pages for the no longer young
the apathy of time laughs in my face
you say each life has its place"

Each life has its place.  I lost it at that point, and he questioned
why it had taken me so long.

A few months later, I was hospitalized and diagnosed.

My college years had quite a few made-for-movies moments like the
one's listed above. Kind of like Felicity without the fantastic
lighting. Or the hot boyfriends. Or the abnormally large apartments.
Aside from the death of a loved one, I wouldn't change any of it if I
could. Looking back on them now as an adult, they are a bit eye
rolling, but in reality, those moments have become sort-of a freckle
on my DNA.

I do wonder sometimes, what the point of such close relationships are.
The kind of relationships where their opinion means so much to you and
it's almost as though you can't pick out a fucking t-shirt without
getting their thoughts on the color. The kind of close relationships
that, when the shit hits the fan, you block the person out and don't
speak to them again until you run into each other at a wedding four
years later.  Being diagnosed is a piece of cake (mmm, cake) when
compared to those post-extraction recoveries.

One time, when I extracted myself from this type of situation, it was
as though I'd lost a limb. Another time, I didn't miss the person at
all. I kept expecting it to creep up on me, but to this day, I don't
miss them.  When I befriend people, I don't ever wonder to myself how
it will end. I don't wonder - will they be a lost limb? Or will they
be un-missed?

I remember my friend Meg and I talking years ago (she too lived in
that house) about things we learn in school but don't feel are going
to be used in the real world. I remember telling her that all the
filler we were learning was to expand our brain. Work the brain, which
is supposedly a muscle, so we can figure out other shit in the future
that will hit us like a ton of bricks because they forgot to teach it
in a 101 class.  That combination of the calculus and philosophy 101
would somehow help strengthen the part of the brain that would help us
figure out how to get our taxes done while building those shelves that
HAVE to go up this week-end. Or, something like that (that's a crap
example, but I'm just a pretend writer so it's ok).

Point is, I never wondered why about my relationships. I mean, I'd
wonder about a person's actions or behavior like any other perfectly
healthy overanylitical freak, but I'd never wonder in the overall
picture, why did I have this relationship and why am I not still close
with them? I think it's the same premise as the brain theory, in a
way. Not to be all After School Special but I suppose our hearts - or
a combo or heart and brain - need the experiences of the past to help
us grow as a person. Thanks to the Felicity episodes of my past, I can
spot the future ones from, like, a mile away. Lesson learned. Next
quasi-crisis averted.