so tonight we went to a holiday shindig and got to spend time with some good old friends of ours in michigan.
i have been telling myself (and anyone who asks) that this was a good year; we adjusted to life in a new place, we enjoy our jobs, and we have made some great friends.
and then i get a few hours with old friends and i get sappy. granted, i am one of the sappiest people i know.
i tend to get cheesy misty during sad movies, romantic movies, happy movies, and well, generally any sentimental occasion.
i was tearing up during "moulin rouge" when we watched it this week. of course, i was half crying-laughing at the use of 70s and 80s tunes, but i was also misting up at the cheesy romantic storyline.
and i was bawling (silently, bien-sur) on christmas eve when my dad played the DVD that he and his girlfriend had made of family photos from my grandparents' childhood onward.
but tonight was probably my sappiest moment in awhile. i didn't tear up, but seeing the sort of friends that i hug "hello" and "goodbye" made me all sentimental.
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one of my professors in college and i were good friends and stayed in touch after i graduated. we'd talked a lot about post-college plans, and i kept in touch with him via email when i lived in NYC. he and i emailed quite a bit when i was debating moving back to michigan.
most of my friends (which any reader of this silly blog must be) know that steve was the main reason that i moved back to michigan. and many of you also know that it wasn't the only reason. i was in a bad spot, politically, at my beloved company (and i say "beloved" without sarcasm: i loved that job). i was competing against a good friend for a promotion, and one of us would have to report to the other. at the same time, my parents were separating and i could tell my brother (who is several years younger and was therefore still living with our parents at the time) was dealing with too much of it by himself.
*magically* a job offer back in michigan was handed my way (a story for another time), and i wasn't sure that i wanted to take it, since i really felt that it was my time to live somewhere else, and experience new things. i loved NY. it had taken awhile to make good friends, and i was thrilled with the ones i had found. i was having a blast living with my roommates. the city excited me, and i was starting to feel like it was home. and yet, somehow i was persuaded that i should be in michigan.
my professor was one of the people that argued most persuasively for it. "people are the most important" he said to me. "you can get used to a place if you have the right people with you."
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i reconcile my guilty feelings for uprooting us from our friends by reminding myself that many of our friends are in states of transition. since we've moved away from michigan, so have several other close friends. however, there are so many that are still here. i was bowled over by their generousity for spending a weekend with me for my birthday. and i am misty-eyed with sappy-happiness when i get to see them and we all hug each other "hello" and "goodbye". i don't have friends like that in chicago. well, at least not yet... i didn't have them in NY that first year. but i DID have them by the time i left the following august...