I have not always been a good friend. Oftentimes I take days to answer a simple text. I tend to groan when I receive unsolicited FaceTime calls – mostly because I prefer notice, not because I do not like the caller (usually). I also have the disgraceful tendency to cancel plans at the last minute. Each of these details about me could either provide the reader with a sense of endearing 
or make you absolutely despise me. Regardless of risk, all of these facts are true. I am not a very good friend.
The fall after the pandemic hit, I decided to take a semester online. The external reasoning for this was due to my fear of catching the virus. While this was a major concern of mine, having been living in New York for the duration of the pandemic for so long, I can now say that this is not the sole reason why I did not return to my college town for my first semester of Sophomore year. The truth was, I did not really know where my place was. While I had a small group of girlfriends I spent my shortened freshman year with, I did not necessarily believe they were my forever friends in any way. They all talked about our future weddings, giggling at the thought of us all being bridesmaids in long pastel gowns. I went along with each fantasy in the moment, but I knew I was not feeling the same way. The platonic commitment issues continued throughout the summer when I dodged every road trip or group call to try and plan out our next meeting. After I had postponed my return back to physical schooling for about four months. Once November rolled around I had to make a decision. I would either transfer to a commuter school, or I would go back and make something of the life I had left and tried to ignore.
I am now a senior at the College of Charleston. I am about to graduate and close this chapter of my life. While I am making the same decision as I had two years ago, the circumstances could not be more different. It is a Friday night and I am singing to the point of a cracking voice in the middle of a dirty kitchen. I am not at a bar with dancing strangers despite being of age to do so. I am singing with my heart to this ballad that I don’t know all of the words to. It doesn’t matter anyway. There is just enough wine for nothing to matter here. I look around at the people surrounding me. These are the very same girls I dodged for a summer. I kept them at arm’s length because I did not know how not to. With numerous fights and laughs and childhood traumas shared between us, we have made it to this spot. At 3 AM in a dirty kitchen. The other people in this room were not there two years ago, but I came back to this college town and found them. And now our voices crack together and our hair sticks to the sweat on our foreheads and we have to wake up ridiculously early for work tomorrow but we will stay in the moment anyway.
I love the final image of voices cracking together, which suggests the essay’s emphasis on a sort of difficult, strained, but ultimately healing coming-together. In some ways, I think the bulk of the essay could have resided in that final scene. The other, contextual matters might be folded in more fluidly. At the start, they certainly establish the barriers to what follows, but those barriers become so much background to the life depicted in the end.