"A friend is the one who comes in when the whole world has gone out."

(Thank you for the quote, Ms. Grace Pulpit.)

Friendship.

According to Facebook, I currently have 1,289 friends. And that’s just on Facebook. Forget about MySpace (which I stopped checking long, long ago) or, dare I even mention it, Friendster. Now, do I really have that many “friends”? Of course not. While there are many different levels of friendship, I generally consider friendship to entail having some sort of meaningful and positive connection with another person, to be comprised of the tenets of loyalty, trust, and mutual respect, and to include some measure of sacrificing, or the willingness to sacrifice part of oneself for the benefit of the other party. Sometimes, we must sacrifice pride in order to allow for the forgiveness of wrongdoing. Other times, we sacrifice our time to do good for the other person, whether it be providing a listening ear, a shoulder to cry on, or running out to buy chocolate and all the other necessary accoutrement for nursing another friend back to life after a horrible break-up or similar tragedy. I hope all of this is common knowledge and I’m just driveling on about a bunch of obvious nonsense…

Now, I know this may sound like I’m currently hallucinating butterflies and rainbows and puffy hearts dance in front of my eyes, but friendship is everywhere. If you know what to look for…

My last night in New York, all hell broke loose and, without getting into the details, I’ll just disclose that I was on the verge of spending a very cold night being homeless on the streets of New York City, desperately trying to find my way to Penn Station to make my train back to D.C. the following day. This doesn’t sound quite so bad, except that I can’t navigate my way around NYC even if some thug had me at gunpoint, yelling at me to tell him how to get to the Empire State Building and it was literally only three blocks away. Also, I hate the cold. And I imagine I would hate having to spend any period of time being homeless. Just thinking logically here, you know.

Anyway, this particular story of friendship involves a beautiful young woman who barely knows me save for the fact that, coincidentally, we’re both Alpha Phis (P.S. I LOVE when that happens!) and we spent an afternoon exploring the Upper East Side together a couple days before what we shall call…“The Crisis” occurred. For my safety, she chose to be present with me when The Crisis went down, lest there be, well, a crisis. And when you-know-what hit the fan, she stood up for me and marched proudly out of the room to run down the apartment building stairs after me to rescue me. Forget whatever implications this had for her in the whole messy situation – to her, it was an afterthought. It didn’t matter.

Perhaps without the details of The Crisis, this doesn’t seem to mean all that much so far. But please bear with me and trust me – this girl saved me, not just from the general peril of that particular neighborhood of NYC at those hours of the night, but also from a complete emotional meltdown. She ran after me, took half of my heavy luggage, and looped her elbow through mine, leading me to a street where we could catch a cab back to her apartment, about a half hour away. She refused to let me pay for anything (including the expensive cab ride) the next several hours she spent taking care of me, making sure that I was warm, comfortable, and had a glass of wine in hand. (Delicious, real Italian dessert wine.)

She stayed awake with me until we were both slurring our words with exhaustion, comforting and reassuring me, listening to me ramble and cry and diverge into various anecdotes that were completely relevant to, well, nothing really. She let her adorable and sweethearted Shitzu sleep curled up next to my legs. And when our “nap” turned into my missing my train completely, she spent the day devoted to my every need, from spending an inordinate amount of time talking me through the maze of my very muddled thoughts to taking me out for a perfect bon voyage dinner at an adorable little French place in her neighborhood (on her, of course). She escorted me all the way to my gate at Penn Station that night (being sensitive to the fact that I can’t even navigate a train station, let alone The Big Apple), and insisted I send her an I’m-home-safe text when I got back to my apartment just before 1 a.m.

She warmly embraced me, air-blew a kiss my way, and she still hasn’t let go. Every day, she checks on me, she cares how my day went, what I did, and we laugh. I mean really laugh. It’s one of those incredible friendships you only come across a couple times in your life, maybe a few if you’re lucky. Let alone in a strange, unfamiliar city, on a horrible crisis night…

And, with that, there’s a “Sex and the City” marathon on and it’s time for me to open a bottle of wine. Hopefully, my spiel on friendship made some modicum of sense.

A toast: to the beginning of a magical, and very miraculous, friendship, and…well, it’s undeniable, to the power of an Alpha Phi sisterhood.

aoe to the dipper and back to you, Janeen. 

The Importance of Quilting

Another Monday. I’m still getting accustomed to the fact that I don’t have a job to go to, but at least I didn’t wake up crying. That happens more often than I’d like…

In honor of National Panhellenic Conference Inc.'s International Badge Day, I’m proudly wearing my Alpha Phi badge on my cotton “Sleepless in Seattle” sleep tee. This is definitely not “badgewear” (for those not in the know, this is sorority terminology for wearing uncomfortable, classy, and conservative ensembles).

I stayed up late last night applying to four or five Editorial Assistant-type jobs. I’ve already scored a phone interview with H_____ for an awesome position that, if anything, I’m likely overqualified for. They called and e-mailed within a day of my submitting my resume and cover letter which, I hope, is a good sign. Now to remember the script I have worked out about how to frame the whole firing thing… “It was a personality conflict” is the main point I’m going to drive home. Plus my old company isn’t looking for anyone to fill my position. Can we say “layoff”? Except they laid me off in a way that they knew would be most damaging, both to my psyche and my reputation. Apparently, consistently outstanding work wasn’t good enough for my supervisor (who, by the way, was too cowardly to even attend the meeting in which I was told I was being “terminated” and left early so as to avoid seeing me after the fact – class act). I have decided working for a woman is almost always, without fail, a toxic situation.

But nevermind the past, despite how fresh it is in my memory. How am I coping, you ask? LIVING IT UP. Yes, I’m applying to every job I can, but I finally have the chance to do all of the things I’ve been wanting to do for so long but couldn’t before because of time constraints and/or the undue stress my old job caused. So I’m partying up in New York City this weekend with one of my best and oldest friends, Marlena, before heading out to Costa Rica toward the end of the month. I have half a mind to send my old supervisor a post card of all the lush flora and fauna that comprises the scenery in Costa Rica. Maybe it would read something like…actually, on second thought, I’ll just keep those sentiments to myself…

What have I learned in the past week and a half (give or take a couple days) of being fired and unemployed? Life actually does go on, whether you want it to or not. Cliché? Maybe. But true nonetheless. It’s your choice whether or not you want to keep up with it.

Do whatever comes to mind. Paint. Take up quilting. Even if you suck at it. In fact, I’m greatly enjoying doing an inordinate amount of things I know I’m no good at. Cooking, experimenting with wild shades of eyeshadow, um…blogging! I’m also getting back to my old, artistic roots by taking violin lessons again, as well as sketching and using pastels.

As Michel de Montaigne famously said, “There are defeats more triumphant than victories.” Every day, something, no matter how small it is, reveals itself to me to prove that this is indeed true.