Somebody I Used to Know

On friendships and how they can reconnect you with your past self

I can count on my hand the number of times when I’ve been part of a close group of friends.

The kind of friends that your life revolves around completely.

The kind of friends that once you’re around them, it’s like your whole body sighs.

The kind of friends that you meld with, not that you lose your individuality but you’re somehow tethered together.

The kind of friends who are your safety net, who will catch you when you slip or fall or just need a little extra support.

In high school, they were my housemates at boarding school. Six of us lived together in a house and it felt like family. It was the first time I truly let myself be vulnerable and silly.

In college, they were my floormates in my dorm freshman year. I was pretty reluctant to let them in because I wasn’t ready to leave my high school friends. I missed them and when I moved to the west coast, I felt like I left a part of me behind. Yet, I fell in with a group of sophomore women and they took me in, enveloping me and making me whole again. Even after I transferred school, these people were my college friends.

They were a group I met during my study abroad program in Florence. Since my college didn’t have a study abroad program in Italy, I joined one jointly hosted by the University of Wisconsin and the University of Michigan. Random, I know. I knew no one and felt awkward, struggling to find my footing in a new country and among new people. But then I made friends with a group of women from the University of Wisconsin and we spent the rest of the semester laughing, eating, and traveling together. We also studied, I swear.

They were a group of friends from one of my first jobs after college. It was the height of the late 1990s dot-com bubble. We were all young. We worked long hours and then went out together after work. There wasn’t much separation between work and friendship and life. It all blended together.

They were also a group of women I met on a four-day writing and running retreat in Bend, Oregon. I think many of us were in our late 30s and 40s, that period of time where you’re settled but also not settled, where you’re looking at things a little differently, thanks to maturity and age. What strikes me about these friends is that they didn’t really become friends until after we returned home. Yet, somehow, there’s an authenticity that I don’t think that I’ve experienced before. They make me feel safe.

I’ve been thinking a lot about friendships lately because I miss the closeness of these relationships. Anne Helen Petersen calls the late 30s/40s period “The Friendship Dip,” a “reckoning with the state of friends, attempting to rekindle ones that have gone fallow or let go of ones that feel toxic, a little more time and space to figure out how to show up for existing friendships.”

When I think about it, each of these friend groups came together during my teen years and early 20s (minus the writing retreat friends). Friendships felt bountiful then. And it was in part because there was the infrastructure to support it—school, campus, work—and there weren’t really any exhausting demands on your time like family, career, aging parents, etc. It was just easier to sustain friendships.

But I also wonder if these friendships felt so meaningful because they occurred during a critical capsule of time in my life. That somehow, we imprinted on each other because we experienced an important and intense period of transition together, a time when we were figuring out who we were.

Sometimes I wish I could go back in time just to hang out with these friends, to feel connected with people in a truly singular and meaningful way. Sometimes I wonder: Were those friendships and those connections just a moment in time? And were they meant to exist only in that specific moment in time?

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Chelsey sent a message in June: Would I be interested in a study abroad reunion at her place in Colorado in the fall?

I’m pretty sure I replied, Yes, almost immediately. I didn’t hesitate. Of course I wanted to see her, Anne, and Kelly. It would be so much fun. Wouldn’t it?

As the weekend approached, admittedly, I was nervous. It had been 26 years since we spent a semester together in Italy and 25 years since we were last together as a group. 25 years is a whole human adult and a lot can happen during that time. I’ve changed a lot in that time. Would we have anything in common? Would we have anything to talk about? Would it be the longest four days of my life?

Chelsey brought three photo albums with her, stuffed with printed pictures from our semester abroad and travels around Europe. We looked so young. And our clothes! Baggy jeans and baggy t-shirts. No make-up or styled hair. It was a luxury during the time before social media, of taking pictures on film and waiting for the photos to be developed. We didn’t have cell phones or GPS. We had no idea where we were half the time.

We sat on the couch and flipped through the photos, reminiscing about people on the program and the silly things we did. Me tearing my ACL for the first time while skiing in Switzerland. Kelly and I pushing our Fiat Cinquecento up a hill in Sicily because it didn’t have enough power to make it by itself. Flamenco dancing in the streets. Riding random buses from Santa Maria Novella just to see where they’d take us. Lying on our backs in the middle of chapels to look at the mosaics on the ceiling. Confusing the train conductors because they didn’t believe that I spoke Italian.

Our little Cinquecento

Despite the intervening years, the four of us largely picked up where we left off. Sure, we’d changed but we hadn’t really changed at our core and our connection still felt real, still felt relevant. Those four days together were like time travel. We stepped outside of our normal lives and existed in what felt like an alternate timeline. We could revisit our younger selves while being our older selves and knowing what happens to those college kids.

There were several moments over the weekend when my heart felt tender. I missed the person I was then. Who was brashly independent, who loved art and art history so much, who wanted to see the world, who laughed a lot, who looked happy, who could feel at ease with these new people in her life.

Sometimes it’s hard to see that part of me in myself today.

It’s not that I wish I could be that exact same person right now. I know that it’s a hefty dose of nostalgia at work.

It’s more that my time in Colorado reminded me of someone I used to be. And it reminded me that that part of me—silly, independent, curious—was still inside me somewhere just like all the other phases of my life. It’s just been hiding, but it’s also been busy dealing with adult life things like kids and family and career.

Meet Marcelo the Moose. He visited us in the backyard.

I wonder if it was me or a function of my life circumstances and/or the people in my life at the time that allowed me to be that silly, independent, curious person. Or maybe it was just easier to connect with that part of myself because I had this time-out from real life.

It feels like I’m emerging from a period of life where I’ve been so head-down and focused on my career and family. There’s a big part of me that craves connection and friendship, that wants to be more expansive. That wants to reinvest in those meaningful friendships that have gone fallow.

Is this a midlife crisis? Maybe. But maybe it’s just a reframing. Maybe it’s a natural evolution and reprioritization of the things that matter and for me and right now, that’s seeking out joy and connection.

Thanks for being here. More soon.

Christine

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