It's August and I go shopping with my sister and our friends Aria, Jason and Raven.
Eloise and I have known these guys since high school. Even if we don't see each other every weekday like we used to when we were younger we make a point to hang out when we can, when we manage to all be at the same place at the same time.
Those are the people that stuck around even after I came out. A lot of my friendship in high school changed or died after I started to announce that I was gay. My guy friends became self conscious thinking I was picturing them naked all the time. Girls all wanted to have me as their gay best friend. I didn't take it personally. It wasn't because of me. It was because of status quo and misconceptions people have as a society with often archaic values.
So we're all shopping together and they're complaining about not seeing me often because Holt is clearly my favourite now and I only ever hang out with him.
I tell them I've become too fabulous for their peasant asses. They keep pretend bowing in front of me every time I start talking.
I love these guys. I know I've neglected them in the last few months, heck in the last few years.
That's the nature of friendship, I guess. When you're in elementary school you freak out about not having friends in the first few months and then you do get friends, but then when you change school and start middle school, those friends change and sometimes you part ways and make new ones. And then the same thing happens when you start high school. And then you leave for college and you often lose touch with all those friends and again make new ones in a new school far away. And then when you're done with college you become friends with the people you work with and lose touch with your other ones.
It's cyclical. Sometimes though some of those friendship are precious and you fight to keep them, even if you all have different goals now, different lives. Aria, Jason and Raven have all changed from when we were in high school, of course they have. Eloise and I have changed too.
But they've always supported me, so I'll always support them.
Some friendships might come and go faster than others, it okay, there's an end to everything I guess. But others are there to stay, through thick and thin, and I'm grateful that these three do.