My Lifeline (May 15th, 2015)
“What makes family-love, family-love? What makes friend-love, friend-love? And what makes love-love, love-love?” The clock at the top of my phone read 12:32 a.m. Amusement tugged the corners of my lips into a thoroughly entertained grin as Becca Stockhaus, once again proving she is a late-night thinker, began a philosophical text conversation about humanity and the difference between lust and love and outer space and the apocalypse and impossibly possible phenomena. She proposed to me this one profoundly realistic and emotion-wrought question while I lay curled in my sheets at the most vulnerable hours of the morning. It still hangs in my mind, unanswered, because a group of people in my life whom I simultaneously consider my siblings, best friends, and significant others, saves me from myself on a daily basis and it took me until my senior year to fully realize it.
Our mutual relationship is indefinable. It is everything in a wave and a comparatively vast meaningful nothingness at the same time and it remains fresh in its ambiguity. Separate histories between each of us in pairs and present memories among us as a four part group -- myself, Becca Stockhaus, Doug Benishek, and Isaac Cuellar -- account for my contented wholeness. I’m not quite sure what vast and meaningless void of nothing I'd be staring blankly in the face for the entirety of my senior year if it hadn’t been for them, but I know it would have been uneventful, melancholic, and dull.
The sun shines from their faces. Colors are brighter when they are near. Their voices touch the parts of my brain that instantly switch my nerves to attention. It might be a romanticized view of what friendship is, but this year I discovered that the best friends I’ve ever been privileged enough to have are the ones I find myself laying in a driveway with at midnight as we admire the star-sprinkled sky and muse over the many wonders it may contain. We stay awake -- past two, four, six a.m. -- and compete in “don’t break eye contact” marathons that last forty minutes. We break speed limits and curfews on occasion. The bed in my room lies empty more and more often since I have found other places to sleep. Other beds, other floors... And cars, but that was only one time. We occupied hotel rooms. We drove across the state. We drove each other crazy. And, through it all, we adorn each other with the most honorable of titles: Best Friends.
I compare this friendship to Hercules and Samson. When tensions rise and tempers grow short, when rough days reveal monsters and our eyes burn red from salty tears, I know undoubtedly that I can go to these people for anything I may need. They will always readily provide a shoulder, a hug, or a smile to keep me from breaking. I feel a steadfast comfort in this friendship and, after wondering how I could possibly feel such a strong bond among a group I just stumbled upon last year, I finally arrived at this conclusion: The best relationships thrive when we put others before ourselves.
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Isaac is the words I don’t have to say. He is the laugh always hiding in my throat. He is the warmth that keeps me alive and, every time I look, I see that warmth in his bright and honest eyes. I believe that his refusal to give up on me has subtly shaped who I am today: someone who believes in second chances, in forgiveness and apologies, and in other people and their value and worth. In middle school, I did not feel loved or wanted or any sense of importance, and he showed me for the first time what it meant to really feel significant, like my life and influence mattered.
Isaac pushed me. He encouraged me out of my comfort zone. He gave me pieces of his sanity when mine ran low. He listened as I screamed in frustration because of whatever dumb reason, year after year. When life didn’t go my way, he heard my heated laments. When I felt like my parents were being irrational, he patiently sat as I steamed in silence. When tensions in our lives rose and became difficult to bear, we took an hour to drive around together, directionless, just like we both felt. We didn’t need a place to go because being together was all either of us needed.
Isaac is the one person in my life who consistently makes time for me, even at his incovenience. At 12:30 a.m., after a seventeen hour day of school and musical performance? Isaac was there. 2:00 a.m., texting any and every thing on our minds? Isaac was there. 3:30 a.m., just arriving at my house to pass the early morning hours and watch the 6:00 a.m. sunrise in each other’s eyes? Isaac was there. He was. He always has been. He is, and always will be.
There’s a nagging voice in the Realist part of my brain that taunts, “Life will take you two different directions. You’re going to drift apart like a million friends before you have as their college years pass.” I, however, am notorious for ignoring that side of my subconscious, and, keeping with tradition, will not let that ominous thought manifest itself. My relationship with Isaac is suredly a best-selling series, riveting non-fiction constantly being penned by its two dynamic and dedicated authors. It is possible that as the future approaches the chapters will be fewer and farther between, but they will be just as strong, just as impulsive and understanding and wild as the past and present chapters have been. Of that, I am sure.
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I met Becca when I was an eighth grader in my first and last year of middle school track. She was a seventh grader and a little rough around the edges, just like me. Since I did online school I didn’t know anybody on the team, but my extroverted personality coaxed me to reach out to people and I made friends quickly. I victimized poor introverted Becca, though, and, as it turns out, the outline of friendship we formed back in 2011 has been fate’s most generous gift to me. The next year, I moved up to high school and our grade difference separated us between two schools. We drifted apart and did not become close again until second semester of my junior year, but, since then, we have been practically sisters. If it had not been for our brief association four years ago, I would not have my best friend today.
On more than one occasion, Becca and I spent hours in random locations talking passionately, somberly, animately, about problems of the past that directly affected our current lives, present circumstances that thrust us into either a sickening twist of misfortunes or an endorphin-fueled tizzy of childlike giggles, and future dreams, the differences between our nightmares and loftiest successes. I know her, and she knows me.
At the beginning of March, a sudden crushing understanding of my ignorance on a situation fell on my shoulders like a deadweight. During my eighth hour study hall, I rushed to sign out for SGS just to get away from school, to leave as quickly as possible the place and the person who so blatantly wronged me. I drove to my parents’ office, parked, and sat despondently in my car as humored disbelief and the sadness of abandonment and betrayal swirled in my mind like a confused and angry storm cloud. And then the torrent of rain began. Tears poured down my cheeks and I sobbed loud, ugly sobs. I gripped the steering wheel, doing my best to hold onto anything while everything else seemingly slipped away. My fragile heart was overfilled with undeserved pain and the wetness of my face professed it. Spilling tears testified and the smears of snot on my sweatshirt sleeve provided no vindication.
The clock passed 3:00 and I instinctively called Becca. She answered the phone and I desperately relayed the story, gasping while I struggled to breathe. “Where are you? I’ll be right there,” she said, and nothing more. Five minutes later, I huddled in a chair, still crying, then laughing, then aggressively cursing followed and not speaking. All the while, she quietly sat across from me just for support. Just so I would know she was there.
I couldn’t ask anything else from her than what she already gives. She is the voice of reality that reasons with my (sometimes too) ambitious ideas, reminding me that I am only human and, just like everyone else, have clear limitations. When my mind runs away, chasing the newest thought like a balloon in the wind, she grabs my wrist and pulls me back. It might raise some eyebrows and provoke scrutiny or doubt, especially among people my age, but I am so grateful for a friend that can and will (and often does) tell me “No.” But, when the time is right, she dreams with me, and we dream the biggest and free-est dreams; often times bigger than we could ever achieve, but there within lies the beauty.
If it were not for Becca, my one true girlfriend, a subtle but vengeful hate and restless angst would lurk in my heart and mind, a constant inhibition to living a thoroughly enjoyed life. We all have this to some extent: it’s the tiny devil or Little Green Monster on our shoulder. She helps me shrug off these destructive characters and focus on the aspects of life that bring happiness and fulfillment. We will sprawl on her living room floor after a particularly emotional day, both of us feeling drained and defeated, and talk life out, back-and-forth, until we’ve put each other together again. Sometimes a breath and a moment of understood silence is all we need and, with Becca, I’ve learned that there is no better remedy than Capri Sun juice pouches, cracked pepper kettle chips, and the company of your best friend.
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My relationship with Doug is quite different. I have distinct memories of Isaac that trace back to elementary school and Becca to middle school, but the first memory of Doug that waves a flag of notation in my mind is from high school. Although we played middle school soccer together, I was too misunderstood and brutish in the seventh grade to forge many lasting friendships. I always enjoyed Doug, but, until fairly recently, only from a distance. We were “friends.” Acquaintances, more accurately. We smiled and laughed and pleasantly passed time when we were together, but it wasn’t often and it rarely happened outside of school.
The summer before my junior year, still in the formative state of our friendship, I went to Doug’s house and watched the movie “Rent.” He avidly raved about it to me and insisted I see it. The last weeks of August threatened an end to my blissful summer, so I figured I’d go, just to get one more night of fun in before the condemnation of a new school year began. Then I remember leaving when the movie was over and strangely wishing I could stay longer: I’m hardly even friends with this guy. Why do I miss him so much?
That winter, Doug auditioned for the musical. He also happened to be Isaac’s best friend. Through Isaac and the musical, Doug and I spent more and more time together. I always knew he was a person of integrity and genuine wholeness, so I came to appreciate him on a personal level. Occasionally, we discussed meaningful topics and subtly strengthened our relationship over time. By the end of junior year, we were no longer acquaintances; we were irrevocably classified as friends.
Now, a year has passed. We climbed water towers and laid in driveways and admired the ambient glow of city lights and the glittering blanket of stars. We watched Becca’s soccer games and endured the unseasonable wintry coldness to support our mutual friend. We donned ourselves in ties and heels, suit jackets and dresses, and snuggled into velvet theatre seats to enjoy professional musical theatre or the nation’s most acclaimed barbershop quartet. We shared blankets on my couch as we watched Disney movies with my parents. We napped together in the back seat of a car while our band trekked to Chippewa Falls for competition. We have a shorter history, but a dense one. We filled the time we had together with every experience we possibly could, and that is what I will remember.
If I ever have any information to share, whether it is good or bad, Doug is my go-to. He is my long-awaited exhale, my relieved and secure sigh. He is comfort, and wherever he is, home can be found. I always search for him in the halls, just for a glimpse, so I’ll know he is near. He is selfless, he is thoughtful, and his confidence inspires me. With every “Doug Hug”, as I’ve begun to affectionately refer to them, I feel the strength of his care and closeness. He wraps me in and there, held together by the arms of the world, I let my walls tumble down because I know I am safe. Like a rock, the assurance of our friendship is immovable and, with Doug, life is right.
- - - - -
We are each other’s radiance and the light in each other’s day. Our friendship, the shared bond between the four of us, has always been a flower, waiting to bloom. All it needed was exposure to the sun.