I realized the other day what this title means. The power of questions. I’ve never been a person to just open my heart to anybody. If friends, family members, friends of friends, coworkers, etc. want to know something about me, I usually won’t just “open up to them”. I’ve gotten better through the years. Being a little more honest and open. (or trying :P) But it’s taken me a long time to get there. And even now I consider myself “shy” if I’m around people I don’t know. (Unless of course I have some adult beverages in me haha 🙂 ) Most of the time I feel like that is a disadvantage in life. I’ve been told multiple times that when someone first meets me or sees me they think I come across as a “bitch”. Unfriendly. Snooty. And I’m not. I just avoid conversations. I think I’ve always been self conscious of the way that others perceive me, and instead of being fake and overly friendly, I tend to be quiet and withdrawn until I personally get to know you. I don’t trust easily. I’ve had my trust completely shattered and broken in my past, and I think that has made me extremely guarded around new faces. It’s a joke with my sisters and I because all of our current husbands/previous boyfriends have always asked us “What is wrong with you?!” And our response? “We just don’t talk. And if you want us to talk, just give us a beer or two. And then we usually won’t shut up.” Haha. And it’s the truth.
So this has made me realize another topic to write about. Questions. I figure when someone asks me a question, I can answer it openly and honestly. (Well…SOMETIMES anyways lol) When you’re getting to know someone, you ask them questions. And little by little you will learn things about their life, their upbringing, and who they are as a person. If you don’t ask the questions, you’ll never get the answers. And I believe it is IMPOSSIBLE to truly understand someone or know a person unless you take the time to ask those questions. Anything from “How many siblings do you have?” to more serious questions like “What do you regret most in your life?”
So here it is…Question #1
Who is the closest friend you’ve ever had? Describe that relationship
I’ve always thought my sisters we’re my closest friends. I turn to them for everything. When something good happens, when something bad happens. They are there. I would never change my relationship with them, but when I read this question initially, my gut told me one response. Shauna.
I met Shauna my Junior year of college in St. Cloud, MN–2003/2004ish. (Whoa, now I feel really old!) She was best friends/roommates with my (then) boyfriend’s sister, Amanda. I moved in with Amanda, Shauna, and another really sweet girl named Jill my Senior year. (Although not technically my Senior year because I ended up on the like- 8 year college plan haha) Shauna and I became really close friends immediately. Something about us just “clicked”. I’d hideout in her room a lot late at nights and we would have great conversations. Mostly gossip 🙂 …because that’s what girls our age did. We talked about boys, about life, about college. I opened up to her about a lot of stuff that was going on in my life at the time, and a lot of stuff that had happened in the couple years before. I was able to talk to her about things that I couldn’t talk to anybody else about. Needless to say, I probably wasn’t an easy friend to deal with. But for some reason she loved me enough (or was crazy enough haha) to move in with me to our own 2 bedroom apartment the following year.
By that time we were quite literally attached at the hip. Two peas in a pod. Wherever she went, I went. Wherever I went, she went. I think other people (especially our boyfriends at the time) got sick of us because we were ALWAYS together lol. I don’t know how we never got sick of each other but we didn’t. Our days consisted of school/work, TV shows, trips to the mall, long talks. Our nights consisted of the same, with the obvious exception of our nightly trips to O’Hara’s and downtown. There was no one else in the city who could “Silverstrike” bowl as good as we could. We were 22/23 years old but yet we still had a child-like life to us. Our excitement was finding vending machines outside of grocery stores to see how many homies we could collect. Always hoping we could get that “special one” we were missing but could never find it in one of those darn machines! And who could forget the all day “Homecoming” excursion. Or the 1 mile walk from O’Haras that someone took us 2 hours hahahaha. And “Welcome to my Life”. That song. We were obsessed with that song. Belting it out from the top of our lungs just sitting in our car at like midnight outside of our apartment. People probably thought we were crazy.
I think one of the most important things about her that made our friendship special was her honest, non judgmental attitude. She wasn’t one to “beat around the bush”, but she had probably the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever met. With all the things we had been through she never judged me, she never questioned me. I could tell her things I couldn’t talk to anyone else about and she would listen. She could make me laugh when no one else could. She was there for me in ways a lot of friends wouldn’t have been. In ways a lot of my “friends” weren’t.
 
I tried to find a quote that fit “her”. That fit our friendship and why it was and is so important to me.  I couldn’t decide between these two. I became incredibly distant to a lot of my friends for a few years. They didn’t understand me…didn’t understand what I was going through. And frankly, didn’t really care to ask. Like I said. I’m not one and definitely WAS NOT one then to open up and tell people what was going on in my life. We all go through “storms” in life. Shauna was a friend who wanted to know what the storms were. She wanted to know how she could help, how she could turn the storms into sunshine. And she accepted me for who I was and believed in me enough to stick by me through the good times and the bad.
Memories. There are SO many memories, a few sad, but mostly fun, happy, stupidly random memories I could share. But the average reader wouldn’t understand. Nobody could really understand “us”. We had a special bond that not a lot of people around us understood. A bond that I’m not sure I could ever have with anyone else.
I know you are all most likely wondering “where are they now”. Like those random TV shows or magazine articles you see about past reality stars and child actors/actresses. She moved out of the apartment we shared a couple of years later. Honestly, it may sound strange and childish but it was one of the worst days of my life lol! Although she was only moving about 10 miles away it felt like she was moving to another country! After all, how do you go from being able to walk 5 feet to her room to now having to (gasp) drive 15 minutes to go see her. We were SO close though that it was just so hard to have my closest friend, my confidante, the person I shared pretty much everything in the world to move away. Her moving changed our relationship some. We were still incredibly close, but I think in a way it was a good separation because it made me grow. I couldn’t completely depend on her 24/7 and had to learn to depend on myself a little more 🙂
I moved to Milwaukee probably about 6 months-a year after. It was then that our relationship grew distant. We didn’t talk as much…but I still considered her my best friend. Even now, we don’t talk nearly as much as we should, and that I regret. The 9 hour distance makes it hard for us to ever really see each other. One of my biggest regrets of my life is that she was not a bridesmaid in my wedding. If I could take it back I would. Something that seems so silly but looking back I don’t even know how she wasn’t.
It used to make me sad when I thought about how close we were and how much we’ve grown apart…but I’ve come to realize that no matter how much we’ve “grown apart”–in distance and in life– she is still one of my best friends. I don’t know where I would be today if I didn’t have our relationship back then. God brought her into my life for a reason, and even though we may not talk every day…or every month…or even every few months… she means more to me than I could ever begin to share with words. I don’t need to talk to her daily to know that she would do anything for me, as I would for her, no questions asked. And that is why she is my closest friend. Was, is, and always will be. Our friendship is a relationship and closeness that is hard to describe. It doesn’t matter where she is physically…I know she is in my heart just as I know that I am in hers. She is my Shanay-nay…always 🙂
Some pictures of just some of the funniest, most random memories:
ALL DAY HOMECOMING SCSU
Our nightly games of Guitar Hero after the bars…
We always wrote notes and drew silly pictures to each other…usually on napkins but this one I distinctively remember. We had gotten home from “O’Hara’s” the night before she was moving out. This is what I left on her door for her to find in the morning. BAHAHAHA. Looking back at it now it seriously brings back so many happy memories.
Just another one of our silly things we did. “The little blue man”. For those who know, I don’t even have to explain. Hahaha
The infamous “Silver Strike”. Which we were awesome at, might I add.
Halloween
Shauna, this one is for you. “I can’t believe I threw my shirt in the fire. I could have at least thrown my phone in. At least that has insurance.” Never have I laughed so hard in my life.
“Friends forever, never apart. Maybe in distance, but not in heart.” Love you lady…
If anyone thinks of a question they’d like to me blog about, feel free to ask. Because again, if you don’t ask, you don’t know. And if you don’t know, then you judge. Don’t judge people you don’t know. You don’t know what they’ve been through. You don’t know the circumstances of their life, past and present. So don’t judge. My physical appearance is like the cover of a book. You can’t possibly know someone by how they look on the outside. If you want to get to know ME, then you have to read the pages in the book. The story that makes up the cover on the outside. And if you don’t like reading, then don’t assume you know what the book is about.
“Don’t judge a book by its cover”
Live and Let Go 