Sailing The Seas Of Cheese

Anyone who even knows me remotely knows that am anything but cheesy. I hate cheesy. No, that's not good enough. I loathe cheesy. I hate cheesy movies, I especially hate cheesy commercials. The people who come up with Coke commercials? I want to punch all of them in neck. But I don't know how to write this post without being cheesy. I've been putting this post off for a while now. I'm not sure how to say the things I really want to say so I'm just going to start typing and see what comes out. I'll do my best to keep the cheese to a minimum but if things get a little schmaltzy, I'm not going to fret over it. And you can bite me.

So here goes.

I've been living in the Columbus, Ohio area for 10 years now. I had spent my high school years about 45 minutes east of here and then went out of the country for 2 years. When I came back, my family had moved into the Central Ohio area and I've been here ever since.

Columbus has probably always been a college town. Ohio State University is one of the largest (I think it is currently the largest) colleges in the country. In recent years, Columbus and some Columbusites have worked to try and shed the college town label but at its heart, it is still just that. And seeing that I attend a church congregation made up entirely of single, college-age people, it's only natural that I would make friends with people that have ended up in Columbus for the sole purpose of attending Ohio State (or the purpose of dating and eventually marrying someone who came for the purpose of attending Ohio State). And most of the time, those friends end up leaving the area once their time at Ohio State is done.

Therefore, over the last 10 years, my friendships have come in cycles. I can think of 3 distinct groups of friends that I've had and there have also been small periods of time in between those cycles where I didn't have any real close friends and was somewhat of a hermit. Well, the third cycle has recently ended and not only was it the absolute best of the three, I'm thinking that the probability that a fourth will begin is pretty low. College kids: I keep getting older while they stay the same age.

So, how to properly give tribute to these 3 people who have been so much of my life for the last three or so years? I don't know, that's where I'm having trouble. What did we do all that time that made things so much fun? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And it was everything we thought it could be. So many meals at Chili's that I don't think I'd be able to eat there with anyone else and truly enjoy it. So many late nights watching our favorite TV shows or movies or just staying up talking about global warming or our (mostly Ted's) bathroom habits or whatever else happened to be on anyone's mind at any given moment. We did nothing and I honestly can't think of any other way I'd have rather spent my time. I think I've laughed more with these three people than with anyone else in my life. I've vented more with these three people than with anyone. Really, I've probably just talked more with these three people than I have with anyone. I can't think of anyone else who knows me better.

The concept of marriage frightens me for many reasons but one of the big ones is, how can you be really sure that you want to spend the rest of your life with this one person? I can be a surly bastard and I can be really impatient with people that bore me. How can I be sure that I won't meet someone, get all twittery, fall in love, get married and then five or ten years down the road wake up one day and look at her and realize, holy crap you bore the hell out of me! I don't know, but I do know that I am sure that I would never get bored of having Justin, Shannon, and yes, even Ted as my best friends.

Over the last week or two, I've been thinking about this in the context of family. I love my family. They're one of the reasons I have no desire to leave Columbus. I know that they love me and will support me in just about anything. But at the same time, I love them sort of because I have to love them. They're my family, right? You don't get to choose your family. You're placed down with this group of people that will have a larger effect on you than any other group, for better or for worse. Initially, you have to love them and, if you're lucky, they'll be the kind of people that you will still love when you become old enough that loving them becomes a choice.

But friends? Friends are the people that you get to choose. They're the people that you choose to love. It's totally up to you from the very beginning. You have no obligations to them. If they treat you wrong, you can sever the relationship and have no strings tying you to them in any way. In my mind, there's nothing better than a truly good friend. One that you trust implicitly because you know them and they know you and you know you can. In the first two of those cycles of friends, there was really only one that fit that definition. Someone that I considered to be like a brother. But of this last group? I was lucky or blessed or both in that all three fit that definition completely.

Guys, if I could choose the people that I would be next-door neighbors with for the rest of my life, it'd be you. I'm happy for you for the things you've accomplished and I'm glad you're able to move on to new phases in your lives. But I'm also a little bitter and angry at the universe and more than a little sad that your moving on involves actually moving away from here. I sort of always knew it was coming but the reality of it actually sucks a lot more than I imagined it would.

I miss you guys already. Thanks for letting a bastard like me be your friend.