I had dinner last night with a good friend. It was very typical for us..a little light shopping, then the exact same meal we get every time we go to PF Chang's and a lot of conversation and laughing. She's definitely one of my true friends. My mom always says a woman should have a few friends that you may not talk to for years, but if you called them at three in the morning to ask for help, their only response would be "I'm on my way".... I say if you get arrested for killing someone and burying the body, these are the girls who'll be sitting next to you in jail with dirt under their fingernails. I have a few friends back home and a few here who definitely carry a shovel in the trunk of their car...just in case.
At dinner last night, we caught up on our mutual friends and what's going on in their lives. Not in a gossiping "oh my God have you heard the latest" sort of way but in an "I wish they saw in themselves what we see" kinda way. Same things we say to their faces but they don't listen to us then either. We talked about the antics of our kids, of which there were plenty, and we talked about ourselves. She is definitely in that inner circle of people I can totally be myself with. She gives great advice but is quick to call me out if I'm making excuses about one thing or another. I'd definitely bury a body with her.
After a few hours of great conversation, I couldn't wind down and go to sleep. I was thinking about the people in my life and my relationships with them. It really made me realize how much I compartmentalize my personality. Something I suspect we all do.
I have this very small group of friends who know all the good, bad and ugly parts of my life and love me anyway. They would defend me to the end and even if they don't like what I'm doing, they don't judge me for it. These are the best type of friends to have and I can only hope I'm as good a friend to them and they are to me. I also have a group of really good friends who would do anything for me but would definitely question my sanity, often expressing their concerns to other people instead of me. Still a great group of friends to have, but they probably wouldn't lie for me on the witness stand. From there the list descends down into acquaintances, friends of friends, coworkers, neighbors and the moms you sit with during your kids gymnastics class every Thursday night.
I think about who I am with each of those people, what piece of my reality I share with them. They definitely don't see the fully open, no secrets girl who had dinner last night at PF Chang's. It doesn't help that I live smack dap in the heart of a conservative, religious right, bible-thumping red state where everyone, and I do mean everyone, you meet either works for Walmart, works for a vendor to Walmart or has family who fits into one of those two categories. And since I'm so liberal if I lean any farther to the left, I'll probably fall off the planet and I consider myself extremely spiritual but not even remotely religious, I've found it's best for my own piece of mind to temper my comments and outbursts until I find myself in the safety of my like-minded friends.
Obviously we aren't going to fully expose our true selves to neighbors and fellow soccer moms, but why do we categorize our friends and family? I can guarantee that I could go on vacation with a group of friends, or my mom, or my kids, or my nieces or the whole group and I'd have a great time but I'd be a completely different person in each scenario. And I think my opinion of the vacation spot would even differ within each group. Some differences are obvious. I'm not going to do any heavy drinking with my kids and the excursions would be totally different for each group. These variables make each experience different, but I also know my experience would be different on other levels to. For example, I went on a spa weekend with five girlfriends recently. It could have easily been a disaster with six women, all wanting a completely different experience from clubbing to relaxing to shopping. But I think a good time was had by all. No one seemed dead-set on getting their way even though it probably would have made the trip perfect for them. And I noticed we had a tendency to split off into groups of two or three most of the time, yet never the same groups. It gave us all a chance to spend some time together with each person and still enjoy the group. It felt like the perfect balance although I'm sure had we subtracted one girl or added another, the whole dynamic would have been different...I would have been different. But with this particular group of girls, I was myself so when a few went clubbing, no one was offended when I chose instead to go back to the hotel with the pregnant girl. Of course they made me pay for it when they drug their butts back in the wee hours of the morning and jumped in the middle of my bed but that was so much better than making me go with them.
The whole weekend was just a good fit. I don't know why it took us eighteen months to pull it together and once again we've promised to make it an annual event....hopefully it'll really happen again next year. But it makes me wonder why we can be ourselves in a group like this and yet we fake it in others? And more importantly, why can't we just be honest and tell our friends that maybe we just don't fit in the same groups anymore? It doesn't mean you care any less for them, it just means you might not bury a body for them again.
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