Of Weddings and Wonderful Friends

This past weekend I was lucky enough to attend a beautiful wedding in Virginia. My friends Tucker and Robyn, who have been together since their sophomore year of college (seven years now) were finally tying the knot. I've known Tucker for many years, but for the first several he was one of my brothers' friends who came over en masse sometimes and I viewed with a mixture of curiosity, annoyance, and fear. The summer before my junior year of high school my brother and I finally became friends and many of his friends became mine as well, including Tucker. He is the reason I knew about Beloit and has been an excellent friend to me for about seven years despite the fact that we only lived in the same place for one of those. I don't know Robyn nearly as well but I always wish I did because she is about 50 kinds of awesome. Their ceremony was sweet and beautiful and perfect and I cried like a baby which was incredibly embarrassing. 

The ceremony was fantastic but I have to say that my absolute favorite part came at the end. At the end of the reception line after I had hugged the couple and started crying again (ugh) I snuck away and called my brother in Vanuatu. I told him weeks ago the day and time so that he would be in a place on the island where he got reception and he called back right away. I told Tucker he had a phone call and he looked incredibly confused until he heard my brother's voice and then his face just lit up. It was adorable. He was probably the most excited I've ever seen him. I am still just so incredibly happy that it worked out so well. 

Besides the wedding itself, the weekend was an amazing chance to see a lot of friends from college. To be honest, I was pretty nervous before the trip. Most of these people I hadn't seen in years and while I care about all of them a lot I only got a year with them in college (with some, some of them were gone before I even got there) and I was a freshman so I am in some ways still slightly awestruck and awkward around them and surprised that they seemed to like me so much (definitely not how I felt about most freshmen when I was a senior). I was worried ahead of time that I would be quiet and nervous around them like back in freshman year and there were a couple of moments of that, I won't deny, but they all hugged me and gave me grad school and life advice and let me fall asleep using their chests as pillows and were just generally fantastic people. I had forgotten how much I missed all of them. Whenever I see them (and definitely in freshman year I felt this way) I wish I were three or four years older. Not that I don't love the friends I made in my grade but I really wish I had gotten to spend more time with that group of people. Although, I do really love the fact that there are people like Matt who I have literally only seen a maximum of four times now (counting the wedding) and who still greets me with an enormous hug and wants to talk about our lives and give me good advice as a recently accepted grad school student. It's really wonderful and I just want all of them to live in the same place (but not the midwest, because I have to get out!).

Being at the wedding and seeing all these people who are always just a little bit ahead of me in terms of life stuff made me think about the future a lot (although, what doesn't these days, honestly?). I have friends with spouses and houses and advanced degrees and real people jobs. I wonder how many of those I will have in four years. It's a bit like when I was walking home from dinner with Carly (another very lovely friend) tonight. I love looking in peoples' windows at night, not to see what they're doing or to be creepy, just to see into their lives for just a second and wonder what their lives are like, if they're happy. I wonder what my life would be like if I'd grown up in that house, if I lived in that house now, if I'll end up in a house like that. What things they have displayed prominently enough that a stranger who happens to glance in from the street would be able to see them, what is important to them. It's fascinating to me. I think I've probably mentioned this before but I think this ties into my view of my life as a Choose Your Own Adventure book. I have so many choices right now and I really wish I could cheat and look ahead a little bit to see which one gets me to the best ending. Of course, I can't, and that's not even how life works. I have this huge fear of having regrets in the future, which is just silly because I don't really have any now, so I don't know how I can be regretting things I haven't even done yet. But, it was really nice to see so many people doing so many different things. Some of them were doing what they always wanted to do, some of them were in a completely different place than they thought, and some of them had taken an unexpected path to get to a place where they are very happy. Of course, I only saw them for a couple of days and it was at a wedding so they seemed very happy, but I think they all are, more or less, in good places and happy with their lives even if they're different than they thought. At least, I really hope so, and not just because it makes me feel better about where my life may or may not go, but because they are all truly fabulous people who deserve to be extremely happy.